


honey don't feed me (i will come back)

by unicornpoe



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Famous Richie Tozier, Fluff, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Paparazzi, Post-Canon Fix-It, Self-Esteem Issues, mom said it's my turn to write the post-canon fix-it, oh they're in LOVE love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:00:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27703813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornpoe/pseuds/unicornpoe
Summary: “Listen,” Eddie says, voice low. He steps closer, until his bare toes align with the edge of a tile. Richie swallows. Blinks. Looks back up. “I don’t mind.”For a moment, Richie can’t possibly fathom what he means. Doesn’t mind what? Doesn’t mind that there’s a picture of him kissing the weird man who he killed a clown with at the top of everybody’s trending page? Doesn’t mind the word boyfriend tossed at him like it’s something that could possibly fit?“What,” Richie rasps, throat dry, words toneless.It would be funny, the way Eddie’s looking at him, if Richie weren’t so damn terrified. “Like, I’ll do it,” Eddie says. There is acute discomfort radiating off of all his sharp points. “Be your boyfriend or whatever.”*Or: Eddie kisses Richie. The world thinks they're dating, but they're not. Eddie thinks Richie isn't in love with him, but he is. Also, a movie premiere.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 94
Kudos: 602





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i posted this [thread](https://twitter.com/unicornpoe/status/1327035647547371520) on my twitter and then i couldn't stop thinking about it, so this happened. enjoy! 
> 
> minor non-graphic emetophobia warning bc... richie

When Richie Tozier is forty-one years old Eddie Kaspbrak kisses him in the middle of the sidewalk. 

It isn’t a very good kiss in terms of technique, but in terms of emotional weight it’s the best kiss of Richie’s entire fucking life. He feels himself melt forward when Eddie presses against him—all the angry inches of his tight-wired body—and the noise of the city around them fades to a hum at the feeling of Eddie’s warm hand on Richie’s jaw. 

Richie’s about to explode into a billion dumb gay pieces. They’ll have to scrape him off the sidewalk with a shovel. 

But then Eddie leans back, frowning up at Richie with tremendous force, and sound rushes back in. 

The honk of a car horn. Richie’s own pulse beating in his ears. The click of a camera shutter, a bright flash, and the voice of the paparazzi who had been harassing them in the first place. 

“Holy shit,” Richie says. 

Eddie’s frown flickers, his eyes moving in a quick pass over whatever dumbfounded expression Richie’s probably wearing. “Go with it,” he mutters, and drags his hand from Richie’s jaw down his side until their fingers are linked. 

Eddie’s grip is tight as a steel trap. Richie holds on, heart pounding. 

Another flash. “Richie, is this your boyfriend?” 

He wrestles his eyes away from Eddie for the first time since he saw him here outside the executive’s office, waiting to walk Richie home after his meeting. The paps must have been waiting, too—Richie’s a popular subject of their photos and invasive questions ever since he came out on Twitter a couple months ago. 

The press doesn’t believe him, is the thing. Richie’s probably a fucking narcissist, he’s read what everybody online and in the gossip rags has to say about him: that he just came out for publicity. That he’s only saying he’s gay so he doesn’t get in trouble for all the shitty stuff he said in his standup in the past. That he doesn’t even have a boyfriend, so how can it be true?

It doesn't bother Richie as much as it probably should. After Derry last year—after remembering, after watching all his badass friends demolish a fucking clown, after moving out here to New York and moving in with Eddie and starting to take his career in the direction he’d always really wanted but been too terrified to explore—the opinions a few thousand people don’t matter to him. He came out to the people who he loves most in the world, and they still love him back. Knowing that is like walking around with bulletproof armor all the time. They love him, and he’s fucking untouchable. 

Eddie doesn’t agree. 

It pisses Eddie off. He’ll read something nasty about Richie on Twitter or Reddit or in the comments under his YouTube clips and go ballistic. He flips off the people who try to photograph Richie in public often enough that there’s an entire Tumblr tag devoted to snapshots of Eddie standing in front of Richie, looking small and livid, both hands raised in the air with his middle fingers up. 

Richie will never admit it, but he finds it sort of charming. Something in him goes soft and warm watching Eddie tear into whatever poor person dared to imply Richie might not really be gay—call him old fashioned, but Richie likes being stood up for. Likes watching Eddie defend him. 

Today, though. Today, when Richie left his meeting with the director and producer of his movie that’s coming out in a couple of weeks and emerged into the chilly November sunshine to have a camera shoved in his face and a thousand rude questions slung at him, it seems that Eddie’s changed his strategy to dealing with it all. 

Richie… is alright with the new method. 

“What do you fucking think, asshole?” Eddie snaps now. His fingertips press into Richie’s palm, his wrist: four points of conscious pressure. His thumb grazes Richie’s knuckles over, and over, and over again. 

The guy with the camera changes his focus from Richie to Eddie, obviously sensing more engagement. It was a good move on his part, because Richie can’t muster up the mental strength to say anything right now. He feels like one dry, firm press of Eddie Kaspbrak’s closed lips against his own has absolutely decimated any brain cells he might’ve had left. Gone, baby, gone. 

“What’s your name?” 

“None of your goddamn business,” Eddie shoots back, and hauls Richie away by the hand before the guy can ask them any more questions. 

Richie stumbles along behind him, helpless. 

Eddie’s sort of… he’s sort of marching, now, hustling them down the street and around the corner as he tows Richie home. He’s staring straight ahead, mouth a flat line. There are two spots of color high and bright on his narrow cheeks. 

“Jesus,” says Eddie loudly. “Fuck bitch ass fuck. Jesus Fucking Christ.  _ Shit,  _ I’m so mad.”

Richie can tell. Eddie swears in long, nonsensical strings when he’s really riled up, no grace to it. It’s unutterably endearing. 

“Eds,” Richie says. The first thing he’s managed since Eddie laid one on him out of fucking nowhere. “Eds, Eddie, slow down, man.”

Eddie glances at Richie sharply with those dark eyes. Eddie doesn’t slow down. 

“I don’t know who the fuck they think they are,” he says. His voice is shaking a little. Richie wants to hug him, and also wants to stop right here in the middle of the street and tell Eddie to do whatever he wants with Richie, because this is the hottest thing he’s ever _ seen.  _ “Acting like they have any right to know  _ anything  _ about you. Any right to—to stop you on the street and act like they’ve got some sort of monopoly over your personal life just because you’re famous. They don’t have any right to that. Not at all.”

“Nope,” Richie says. His tongue feels thick in his mouth, stupid. He’s in danger of dropping to his knees right here, right on the concrete. “So why’d you… kiss me?”

It’s hard to get the words out. Just saying it makes Richie’s whole body hot, a melting kind of heat that has him collapsing inwards like one of those dripping clock paintings. Jesus Christ, is he fucking swooning? Maybe. Sue him. 

Eddie stops. “Well,” says Eddie. “Well.” And suddenly he loses some of his steam. He turns to face Richie, his eyes big. “That was sort of a split second decision.”

Richie wants to lean down and kiss the frown off of his mouth. “Uh huh,” he says. 

“But in the moment I couldn’t think of anything else to get them to stop asking you that same stupid question.” His eyebrows are knitted together above the bridge of his nose, so many wrinkles in his forehead that Richie couldn’t count them if he wanted to. “I figured showing them would answer it.”

Richie shouldn’t say it. He shouldn’t. Really, really, really.

“Eddie,” he says, and wants to throw himself off of a bridge, “you aren’t though. My boyfriend. Is the thing.”

The glare is back. “You think I don’t know that?” He moves closer to Richie absently as a couple of people move past them on the sidewalk, just getting out of the way, and Richie’s heart catches in his throat. God. God. “But now the media will think I am, and maybe they’ll leave you alone for a couple days.” 

“I don’t care, Spaghetti Man,” Richie says quietly. “I’ve got you—you guys. The Losers. Who gives a shit about the rest?”

“Me,” says Eddie, serious and intense—and that’s always how it’s been, isn’t it? Even when they were kids. Richie thinks of Eddie, eleven, brow furrowed, hands on his hips as he yelled at a girl in their grade for making fun of Richie’s coke-bottle glasses. Eddie had gotten detention for that. Richie had felt simultaneously terrible for getting him in trouble and exhilarated that Eddie would risk getting in trouble to defend him. He hadn’t known what it all meant at the time. 

“I know,” Richie says finally. He squeezes Eddie’s hand in his and watches Eddie realize they’re still linked that way: brown eyes darting down to gaze at their interlocked fingers, then back up to Richie’s face. Still Eddie doesn’t let go. “Thanks, Eddie my love.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Idiot,” he says, but sounds like he means something different. 

What exactly, Richie isn’t sure. 

*

So the joke goes like this: 

There’s this guy, ok? This guy, real scuzzball, a fucking comedian, which you could’ve guessed. There’s this comedian. Let's call him Ralph. So Ralph wakes up one day, wakes up with his fucking shoes still on, pants off but shoes on, what kinda idiot wakes up with his pants off but his shoes on? He wakes up on the couch, facedown, and his mouth tastes like bourbon and it’s not even the good kind, it’s the shitty kind, the kind you get at gas station when you’re twenty-one and you love somebody or find under the counter of your big empty house when you’re forty-one and you love somebody, somebody really fucking special—Frank. Let’s call him Frank. So Ralph wakes up, pants off, shoes on, still drunk, in love with Frank, and he thinks his chest might crack open and turn him inside out like a shirt in the wash, just wring every last bit of anything good right out of him until he’s nothing but the bones he walked in on and the skin he grew to hide them away, and Ralph throws up on the floor of the big empty house he hates so much, and Ralph thinks  _ I love you I love you I love you _ . And he calls Frank. He says Frank, I don’t think anybody’s ever seen me. I don’t think anybody’s ever looked at me and seen me all the way through. What kinda idiot says that? What kinda fucking idiot comedian says that, his own sick on his tongue, broken and wrong inside with the man he loves, the man he almost saw killed on the other end of the phone? What kinda— 

—come to New York, Frank says. 

New York. That shithole? People on people, rats in the subway? What’s there except comedians? 

I’m here, says Frank. 

He goes to New York. He’s an idiot, he’s the worst guy you’ve ever seen, sick in the head and the heart and on his expensive fucking hardwood. He goes to New York. 

Isn’t that the funniest shit you’ve ever heard?

*

“How’d the meeting go?” Eddie asks him. They’ve been home for a couple of hours, eaten the dinner they picked up on the way, sat in the living room and watched some reality TV show that Ben and Eddie are hooked on and Richie watches because he likes doing things that Eddie likes. Eddie’s feet are shoved up under Richie’s thigh. Richie thinks about kissing him and tries not to let it show. “Everything still on track?”

“If you can believe it,” Richie says. He lets himself smile at Eddie more softly than he usually would, here in the half-dark of their living room with only the television and the lamp behind Eddie casting any light. “I still can’t believe anybody stooped low enough to work with lil ole me.”

He says it like it’s a joke, voice shifting into a Voice, Southern and drawn out. He bats his eyelashes when Eddie looks at him. 

It isn’t a joke. Richie doesn’t think he’ll ever get over the shock of not only writing his own material, but writing material that other people want to produce, perform. The movie whose script he wrote in a haze of sudden inspiration after moving to New York to live with Eddie a year and a half ago is going to premiere in two weeks time, and Richie still feels like any day now somebody’ll tell him things aren’t going to work out.  _ Clear out your desk Mr. Tozier! Hasta la vista, baby, but you’re too much for us.  _

“Don’t be stupid,” Eddie says. He took a shower when they got home and his hair has dried soft and messy like it does when he doesn’t put any product in it, a very slight curl to the ends. He’s wearing Richie’s shirt. Richie’s heart beats  _ boom, boom, boom.  _ “They’re lucky to work with you.”

Sometimes when it’s late and Richie’s a little bit tired, he thinks he could eat this man whole. 

“You’re being uncharacteristically nice today, Eddie Spaghetti.” He gasps, loud and dramatic. “Is there something you’re gearing up to tell me? Oh my god, are you leaving me for another man?” 

Eddie stabs him in the arm with a very sharp finger and then soothes over the spot with the palm of his hand, a warm brush. He leaves it there, fingers barely tucked under the sleeve of Richie’s t-shirt. “Fucking maybe I’m just. Fucking nice. Dickhead.”

“You’re not, though,” Richie says. He can feel how wide his smile is, feel it pulled over his teeth, stretched out happy. “You’re so mean and I like you so much,” he says, and taps the tip of Eddie’s nose. 

Eddie swats Richie’s hand out of the air, scowling. He bats it down to the cushion between them and then he covers it with his own, palm pressed down over knuckle and tendon and bone. “Fuck you.”

“Anger radiates off of you in waves,” Richie says. His pulse jumps in his wrists. “I’m delighted by it. It’s delightful. You’re a chihuahua.” 

Eddie is touching him in three places: hand, shoulder, thigh. Hand, shoulder, thigh. 

“I will punch you in the throat,” Eddie says. “Chihuahua—I am. Oh my god.”

“Yeah!” says Richie, warming up to it now, more because it’s getting him attention from Eddie than that he really believes it. Eddie isn’t even that small. But he looks at Richie when he makes fun of him, close enough that Richie can almost feel, and that’s enough to keep him going. “Little chihuahua man! I would like to—I’m gonna carry you in my purse like Elle Woods, Eddie, hoo-boy oh my  _ goodness. _ ”

Hand, shoulder, thigh. 

“I am not a fucking dog,” says Eddie. “I am fucking delectable.” He’s smiling, and it’s the savage kind, the one with wide corners and a glint of incisor and the sort of wild eyes that make Richie wanna launch himself over the expanse of cushion between them and kiss him deep. “Shit fuck ass. Fucking fuck you. You bastard.”

He is. He’s fucking delectable. Richie will eat him with a spoon. 

“Imagine if you could take a compliment,” Eddie continues. “Imagine the world we’d live in.”

“It would be wonderful indeed, my darling Eds,” Richie says. 

When he goes to bed, their little stunt in front of the paparazzi is the last thing on his mind. 

*

When he wakes up it’s all he can think about. 

What the god’s name was Eddie thinking when he did that? Now not only will Richie be tracked by paps but Eddie will, too, even when Richie’s not with him. Paps who think they’re dating. Them. Richie and Eddie. 

Richie rolls over fast, hand scuttling over his nightstand until his fingers meet his glasses and he can mash them onto his face. He knocked his phone to the floor in the process of doing that so he dives down for that now, swiping at the dusty floorboards beneath his bed until he grabs it. 

The amount of notifications on his screen makes him sick. He unlocks it with his heart in his throat, heading to Twitter. 

His mentions are flooded. He clicks the first article he sees. 

**Disgraced Comedian Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier Caught Kissing Mystery Man! Secret Boyfriend or Clingy Fling?**

Under that trainwreck of a headline is a series of pictures that Richie swipes through with a growing sense of dread. Richie, smiling at Eddie as he comes down the steps and sees him waiting there; Eddie, glaring directly into the camera with a frown so chilling Richie almost shivers. 

The third and final one is what Richie can’t stop staring at. It's the both of them, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, Eddie’s hand on Richie’s jaw, eyes screwed up shut as he kisses Richie’s shock-lax mouth. Richie is tilted in toward him like a fucking tree, arms dangling stupidly at his sides, eyes half-closed. His cheeks are red. Richie can practically taste the longing rolling off of him. 

Eddie looks slim and handsome and as lovely as always. And also significantly more hell-bent proving something than like he’s being kissed by the love of his life. 

Which. Well. 

“Fuck,” Richie says out loud, voice embarrassingly thick. “Fuck  _ me. _ ”

He doesn’t think he can go out there. Out to the kitchen, he means. What the hell is he supposed to say?  _ Hey, Eds, I know you just pretended to be my boyfriend yesterday in a fit of protective and platonic rage, but now you’re the subject of seven hundred articles and being seen with me has probably tarnished your reputation forever. Good morning!  _

Panic, sour and metallic in the back of Richie’s throat. Richie closes Twitter and tosses his phone to the other side of the mattress where he doesn’t have to look at it anymore. 

It buzzes with an incoming call. His publicist, he’s sure. He ignores it.

He has to talk to Eddie. Has to get him away from all this. Maybe Eddie can go stay with Bev and Ben in their lake house upstate for a couple of weeks until the media frenzy around them dies down, Richie thinks, so only Richie will have to face the fallout of… whatever this is. 

Richie sits up, standing on legs that wobble with residual dread. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. 

His phone goes quiet for a moment before it starts to buzz again. 

He never should’ve moved here. 

Richie hopes Eddie isn’t too upset, hopes he isn’t angry or—or wants to fucking move out permanently, get a little bit of disance between himself and the guy the media finds so fucking interesting they’ll track him down at his job— 

“Fuck,” Richie whispers again, and yanks open his bedroom door to dash across the hall and hurl into the toilet. 

The tile is very cold against his knees. This is incredibly dramatic of him. He’s always had a weak stomach. 

_ I shouldn’t have,  _ he thinks,  _ I shouldn’t have.  _

“Richie?”

Eddie sounds concerned rather than annoyed, which is admirable considering that it’s not even nine am yet and Richie’s already having a breakdown. 

Considering that there’s a picture of Eddie kissing him featured on Buzzfeed today and right now Eddie’s phone is probably erupting with as much force as Richie’s was. 

“Rich,” Eddie says again, and then there’s the sound of his bare feet padding across the bathroom, and then his palm is nestled between Richie’s shoulder blades, warm and careful. “It’s ok.”

“Sorry,” Richie says. He’s not throwing up anymore, but he can’t look at Eddie. He feels suddenly and acutely like he’ll die with shame, for more reasons than the obvious one.  _ Don’t touch,  _ he thinks, and doesn’t mean it. 

“It’s ok, man,” Eddie repeats, and rubs a gentle circle over the apex of Richie’s spine. “All done?”

Richie makes a noise of assent in the back of his throat, small and half-hearted. He’s honestly not sure. There’s nothing left inside, but every time he thinks of Eddie seeing those pictures of them and reading what everyone’s saying, his empty stomach wrings itself out. 

But he stands anyway. Flushes. Lets Eddie’s urging hands guide him to the sink where he picks out his toothbrush from the cup and applies toothpaste with a shaking hand. 

He can feel Eddie watching him in the mirror. See large brown eyes in his periphery, moon-like, avid and hard to avoid. 

Richie spits. Rinses, and spits again. 

When he’s done, he turns around.

Eddie’s hair is morning-messy. Shadows under his eyes like he didn’t sleep well. He’s watching Richie: still, steady. 

“You saw it,” Richie says. Not a question. 

Eddie’s mouth is quirked down at the corners the way he gets when he’s serious about something. “Yes,” he says, standing a few paces away from Richie with his bare feet and his sleep hair and his too big shirt. “Yeah. I saw it.”

Richie wants to ask him what he’s gonna do about it. Richie wants to be angry at him for starting this whole thing in the first place, but instead he just feels disgusting and shameful and vaguely ill, and something with long teeth and a hungry stomach yawns a cracking ache beneath the arch of his ribs. 

“Listen,” Eddie says, voice low. He steps closer, until his bare toes align with the edge of a tile. Richie swallows. Blinks. Looks back up. “I don’t mind.”

For a moment, Richie can’t possibly fathom what he means. Doesn’t mind what? Doesn’t mind that there’s a picture of him kissing the weird man who he killed a clown with at the top of everybody’s trending page? Doesn’t mind the word  _ boyfriend  _ tossed at him like it’s something that could possibly fit?

“What,” Richie rasps, throat dry, words toneless. 

It would be funny, the way Eddie’s looking at him, if Richie weren’t so damn terrified. “Like, I’ll do it,” Eddie says. There is acute discomfort radiating off of all his sharp points. “Be your boyfriend or whatever.”

If someone came up to Richie with a gun and said ‘do anything with your face except gape at Eddie like there’s nothing going on upstairs’ Richie wouldn’t be able to do it. Flat out would not be capable of closing his damn mouth. 

Eddie makes a huffy sound, a  _ whiff  _ of air out his nostrils and a shift of his shoulders to accompany it. “It’s easier like this, right? I’ll just date you until your premiere and then nobody’s going to care whether you’ve got a boyfriend or not anyway. Plus it’s already all over the place,” he adds like any of this is reasonable, “and any positive attention is good, right?”

Richie should really say something. Should definitely say something. He takes a rattling breath, and then he says “Are you out of your fucking mind.”

Eddie doesn’t wince because Eddie doesn’t do things like wince, but Richie watches his face crumple very slightly, folding in like wet paper. It’s absolutely heartbreaking. He springs to correct it. 

“I mean,” he says, “I mean,  _ Eddie, _ ” and somehow he’s touching Eddie now, both palms curved around the point of his tense little shoulders. “You don’t have to do that for me.”

“I know I don’t, fuckface,” Eddie says, but his face loses that folded defeat, his eyes gain back their shine, so it’s worth it. He pokes Richie in the softness of his stomach, which is a bold move considering Richie just upchucked. “I want to.”

Richie is gonna pass away right here in their small, Kaspbrak-clean bathroom. Just, fully collapse, and watch his soul leave his body with his rotting corpse eyes rolled back in his head. 

“Eddie Spaghetti,” he says. “Why?”

“Same reason I fucking kissed you, numbnuts,” says Eddie, and that’s apparently the end of the sentence. 

Richie supposes he’s to infer what to fill in there. But his gut churns again when he tries, so he lets that particular sleeping dog lie.

“I mean obviously I’m not gonna force you,” Eddie says, grumpy and lovely and weird as shit, and Richie thinks faintly  _ oh obviously _ with no conviction at all. “But I don’t think it’d be the worst fucking experience of your life. I’d just hold your hand and kiss you a little and stuff for a couple weeks until this all dies down. If you want.”

Richie wants very much. Too much. “You seriously wouldn’t mind?” he asks weakly. 

“Richie,” says Eddie. Richie’s hands are still on Eddie’s shoulders; Eddie covers one of them with his own, his fingers notching in between Richie’s knuckles. “Would I fucking offer if I minded.”

Another not-question. Richie answers anyway, and he’s honest. “No.”

“No,” says Eddie. He could kiss Richie right now and Richie would let him. It’s not even a doubt. Richie would lean into him and let Eddie do whatever he wanted. “So.”

Richie doesn’t know how to say,  _ this is what I do.  _ He doesn’t know how to tell Eddie that he loves people so much that he’s almost never brave enough to let them in in the first place. Doesn’t know how to say that it’s already practically hopeless—that Eddie imprinted himself upon Richie’s bones when they were kids, carved himself deep in the marrow ages ago, and if they get any closer and then Richie has to give him away, he might break in half. 

“You think it would work?” he asks, even though it’s not what he wants to ask at all. And then, because this moment between them is shifting into something too soft to touch and that scares Richie to his core, “I’m obviously way out of your league so it might not work.”

Eddie pokes him again, one sharp prod in his sternum, and does something unamused with his eyebrows. He says, “People obviously care.”

“I hate being famous,” Richie says. 

“You aren’t famous,” Eddie says, “You’re working with famous people, and gay.”

Surprised, Richie laughs. It clears some of the tension out of the room, enough so that he can breathe without feeling like he’s drowning. 

“And I used to say fucked up shit,” he adds.

“You still say fucked up shit,” Eddie says plainly, and finally steps back from Richie completely, hands falling away. “If I make you some toast will you eat it or throw up on my floor?”

“I’ll eat it, mom,” Richie says, and hates the heat in his chest that springs up when Eddie flips him off. 

*

“So here’s what I’m thinking,” Eddie says. 

Richie looks up over the edge of the couch because apparently he doesn’t value his own life. It’s abruptly difficult to breathe, as he knew it would be, because it always is when Eddie walks in after his runs. 

You’d think Richie’s the one who just sprinted around the block like he was being chased. 

Eddie walks up to the couch and braces his hands on the back, doing a couple of limber lunge things. His head hangs between his shoulders, breath puffing out of him in a very mild pant. There is sweat on his temples and the hinges of his elbows even though it’s fucking November. His cheeks are flushed pink and so is his neck, leading down the curved collar of his tight little running shirt down to a chest that Richie can’t see but can artfully imagine. 

He’s wearing fucking  _ leggings.  _

_ Compression tights,  _ says Eddie’s voice in Richie’s head, and Richie says out loud, “Um, what?”

Eddie lifts his head to meet Richie’s eyes. Richie, who has been laying on their couch eating a bag of dry cereal while Eddie went off and exercised and flaunted his tight bod to the world, feels abruptly hot and flustered and gross and sits up, wiping crumbs off his chest. 

“About us dating,” Eddie says, apparently completely unaware of the way those two words light Richie up like a bonfire. Eddie’s at the sink now; he fills up a cup with water and takes a long drink, the muscles in his throat working. “We obviously need a game plan.”

He’s approaching this like he can beat it around the head with statistics and suddenly it will be submissive and easily to manhandle. He’s probably right. 

Richie feels the urge to needle him anyway. “Obviously,” he says, and waits until Eddie is looking at him to roll his eyes. 

Eddie shoots him a frown. “A game plan is a detailed and efficient way to make sure you don’t fuck this up, Richie,” he snaps.

That probably shouldn’t sting. It’s simply the truth—but, well. Lizzo was right. 

“Geez, Eds,” Richie says, playing it off with a laugh. He makes himself drag his eyes away from all the slender lines that make up Eddie. Looks at the TV instead. It’s playing  _ Family Feud  _ on mute. “Maybe we should just quit while we’re ahead, if you’re so sure I’m gonna crash and burn.”

Eddie is quiet and for one suspended, sickening moment, Richie is sure he’s left the room. Probably to pack all his fancy matching luggage and move out completely and leave Richie forever and ever and only see him on holidays with the rest of the Losers around to look at him sympathetically but with a little bit of anger because he was too much of a mess to live with their best friend. 

But then, “Fuck,” Eddie sighs, and comes around the side of the couch to sit near Richie’s feet. His hand drops to Richie’s ankle like it’s nothing. “Rich. I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.”

Eddie’s hand is very warm beneath the cuff of Richie’s sweats, his thumb just grazing the knob of Richie’s ankle bone. “No big deal, Spagheds,” he says. He grins, big and fake and strained. It’d be fabulous if Eddie would either let go of him or crawl up the length of Richie’s body and crush him into the cushions. Either would be just splendid. “You’re totally right.”

Eddie’s face gets fierce. Eyebrows tumbled down, two creases at the sides of his mouth that Richie would like to press his thumbs into. “No I’m not,” he says, “I’m lashing out because I’m nervous about my own shortcomings.”

Richie fucking loves this man. “Right,” he says. 

Eddie squeezes his ankle. Richie blacks out for a moment. God, he feels like a repressed Victorian invalid, swooning at the slightest bit of contact. 

“That’s what Rashid says I do,” Eddie explains. “I believe him.”

Rashid is Eddie’s therapist. Richie has never met him, but will promptly kiss the man on the forehead if he ever does because Richie’s pretty sure Eddie would be about a billion times less happy if he’d never started seeing him. Richie says, “You don’t have any shortcomings, Eds,” with another stretched-wide grin, real this time. “You’re perfect perfect perfect!”

He leans forward, lips smacking wetly like he’s going to kiss Eddie’s cheek. Eddie catches him around the shoulders and shoves him back, fingers brushing the skin of Richie’s neck. 

Richie feels peeled open like a banana. 

“That’s not true,” Eddie grumbles, as if he’s fucking pissed that Richie just payed him a compliment. He’s not touching Richie anymore. “Nobody’s perfect.” 

“Pobody’s nerfect.”

“ _ Richie. _ ”

“Right,” Richie says again, sinking toward Eddie on the couch until their shoulders are just a breath apart. He’s a fucking masochist, clearly. “Right. Game plan.”

“I’m sorry though, bro,” Eddie says. Richie finds it uproariously hilarious that Eddie says  _ bro,  _ which Eddie knows, which must be why it comes out now. Richie can feel the laugh tugging at his lungs. “I think we have about equal chances of fucking this up.”

Richie bites the bullet. He leans that last inch of space sideways until he’s slumped into Eddie’s side like an enormous dog, the crown of his head butted up against Eddie’s neck from how low he’s stretched. 

“Very fair assessment, Mister Sexy Little Risk Analyst,” he decides. 

“Thanks,” Eddie says dryly. He shifts to get comfortable and ends up with his arm around Richie’s shoulders. Now Richie is pressed up against Eddie, fresh off of a run, a little sweaty in a way that Richie finds intensely appealing because he’s a hooligan with gross taste. “I think I should take you to lunch and kiss you.”

“Fuck me upside down,” Richie says. 

He can feel Eddie laugh. It’s a nervous sounding laugh, and for some reason that helps steady him. Maybe they  _ do _ have equal chances of fucking this up. 

“Does that sound, like.” Eddie is playing with the sleeve of Richie’s t-shirt, restless. “Bad.”

Richie is in hell. “I don’t know,” he says wildly, “does it?”

Eddie smacks the side of his head lightly. “I asked you first!”

“Well I have social anxiety!”

“So do I, you enormous dickwad!”

“Eddie!” Richie says, and laughs, hysterical, turning his face to bury his nose in Eddie’s soft neck. Eddie shakes against him, loud peels of laughter, tugging and tugging at Richie’s sleeve like he can coax normalcy out of him if he really tries. He should know better. “Lunch sounds really great, I’m a fan of lunch!”

“Yeah, yeah, ok, sure,” Eddie says, and then he sobers a bit. It’s slight. It’s enough that Richie doesn’t want to resurface and be seen by him. “What about the kissing?”

“Um.” Eddie smells good. Like sweat and aftershave and clean clothes. “That sounds fine.”

It doesn’t sound fine. It sounds earth-shattering, catastrophic. It sounds so good that Richie’s middle goes hot when he thinks of it, like a bowl of soup. 

“Fine,” Eddie echoes. 

“I mean that. I mean that it’s a good idea, probably. If we’re going to convince people.” 

Eddie’s hand is still now, just wound up in the fabric of Richie’s sleeve. 

“Ok,” Eddie says, and then seems to make a decision: he nods sharply, his jaw grazing the crown of Richie’s head. He pats Richie’s shoulder. “Get dressed then. We’re going to lunch.”

Richie fucks up and checks his phone as he’s getting ready. 

There are four missed calls from his publicist, his inbox is brimming, and his Twitter mentions are so high that they don’t even tell him the right number, just show a bright red 20 that he knows in his bones isn’t accurate. 

It’s the texts that freak him out the most. 

The Losers Club group chat has, as Bill likes to say, popped off. But not in the way Richie would have guessed: no shock, no demanding questions, no urges for either of them to explain what’s going on. Instead, their friends are simply… being nice. Congratulating them. Mike’s text in particular stands out. 

**Mikey**

_ Sorry we had to find out this way, but I’m glad you two finally got things sorted! _ _ ❤️❤️❤️  _

“What the hell does that mean,” Richie mutters, shoving his feet into his battered converse as he swipes through the chat. They’re all like that. Happy for him and Eddie, and entirely, pointedly unsurprised. 

Eddie is by the front door shrugging on his coat when Richie emerges. He’s gazing at his own phone with a frown; he meets Richie’s eyes, the corners of his mouth pinched. 

“So they’re being fucking weird,” Richie says, reaching for his own coat and slipping it on over his shoulders. He leaves it open because he knows Eddie gets annoyed when he does that and he likes the way Eddie charges in and zips it up for him instead. “Right? They’re all acting like weird people?”

Right on cue Eddie steps in and gets his hands on either side of Richie’s coat, lining up the zipper carefully with nimble fingers. Richie’s breath stirs the hairs on top of Eddie’s head. Richie could kiss him there, if he wanted. 

“Maybe they’re just trying to be calm about it,” Eddie says. The zipper closes up with a  _ snick _ ; Eddie cuffs Richie bracingly and unromantically on the shoulder, and then links their arms together as they leave the apartment. He’s throwing off very mixed signals. “Trying not to make us uncomfortable.”

Richie thinks this is wildly unlike them, but he doesn’t say anything. Eddie is warm and firm at his side and Richie’s unreasonably afraid that if he says anything too loud Eddie will pull away. 

*

At least three people in this restaurant recognize Richie. 

He’s not sure if it’s because they’re fans or because they’re human beings with Internet access—but it doesn’t really matter. Richie feels eyes on him as he eats, sees two women a few tables away talking to each other behind their menus while darting glances at him, and knows that if Eddie wants them to be seen kissing here and for people to care, he’s in for a treat. 

Richie tries to eat his salad but he can’t stop thinking about… that. 

Kissing. 

Eddie’s going to kiss him. 

Eddie’s in the middle of telling Richie about somebody at work who keeps fucking something up when he stops. Looks at Richie. 

“Richie,” he says. 

Richie blinks at him. Takes a sip of water, hands embarrassingly unsteady. 

“I feel like we should have practiced,” Richie says suddenly. He sits on his hands so Eddie can’t see them and stares down at a limp piece of lettuce doused in some kind of dressing that he doesn’t really like. “Kissing. I haven’t kissed anybody in a really long time.”

Eddie asks, “Are you bad at it?”

This forces Richie’s gaze up. He shifts a little, the back of his neck hot. “Well I’d like to think not, Eds—”

“Neither am I,” Eddie says. He smiles a little, and it’s the kind of small and self-satisfied smile that makes Richie go hot all over, makes him want to—to—to curl his arms around Eddie’s waist and press his cheek to Eddie’s stomach and listen to him breathe. Richie  _ wants,  _ deep and all over. “I think we’ll do ok, sweetheart.”

If Richie wasn’t sitting on his hands he would have knocked his water over with how that makes him jump. He leans forward until his stomach is pressed against the table and says “ _ What?”  _

The smile has grown, has spread. Devious and charming and like he knows just what he’s doing. Richie can’t believe that this is the same guy who once deliberated for fifteen minutes over whether or not he should include a heart emoji in the breakup text he sent his wife. 

“People might be listening,” Eddie says mildly. 

“So you’re just gonna say things,” Richie says. “You’re just going to say  _ things  _ to me.”

Eddie kicks him under the table. “You call me baby all the time,” he says. “You called me sexy this morning.”

Richie is either insane or Eddie’s flushing. Or both. 

_ That’s because I mean it,  _ Richie thinks. “That’s because I’m irreverent,” Richie says. “I’m a shitty irreverent comedian who says shitty irreverent things.”

“I think you’re funny,” Eddie says. 

Richie drops his forehead to the table because he can’t handle looking Eddie in the eyes right now. He hears Eddie’s soft laugh above him, hears Eddie scoot Richie’s salad back so he doesn’t get his hair in it. 

It’s not that Eddie’s never said he thinks Richie’s funny—for all that Eddie likes to give him shit, he also likes to tell Richie good things about him to his face because he knows it makes him dissolve—but he’s never said it right after calling him  _ sweetheart.  _ The pet name, the praise… it’s all too much to handle. 

When Richie finds the strength to lift his head more people are looking at him, although that’s probably more to do with the fact that he was face down in a public place than that they know who he is. He watches Eddie pay, smiling politely at the server, and thinks about Eddie’s mouth on his; he watches Eddie sign their receipt and thinks about those hands on his hips, his waist, his thighs, his neck, his— 

“Alright,” Eddie mutters, grabbing Richie’s hand and leading him toward the door. “Let’s do this.”

He sounds like he’s gearing up to climb Mount Everest. If Richie wasn’t falling apart, he might laugh. 

“I’m gonna throw up again,” Richie says. 

“God, Richie, that’s so unflattering,” Eddie says, and turns toward him, and then his hand is on Richie’s jaw again and apparently that’s a major turn on but it might just be because he’s  _ Eddie,  _ and “Fuck you,” Eddie says, and pulls Richie down a little bit and kisses him again. 

It’s easier this time. Richie saw it coming, had time to prepare. Makes a conscious effort not to hunch over and clutch at Eddie like King Kong. Can’t help the quiet noise that escapes him, but the bustle of the restaurant should cover that. 

When Eddie pulls back, it’s instinctual to reach for him. Eddie catches his hand. Folds it over in his own. “Rich,” he says, and all they did was brush mouths, but his voice is low like he’s telling a secret. “We’re blocking up the doorway.”

Richie lets Eddie lead him outside. He also lets Eddie wrap his arms around Richie’s waist and press their chests together and kiss him again in the cold bright daylight. 

_ I can’t do this,  _ Richie thinks, one hand spread over the center of Eddie’s back where he can feel his pulse beating like wings. Eddie tilts Richie’s head down, lifts his own chin; he breathes shaky against Richie’s skin, and when he comes back his lips are parted. 

There’s that noise again. Something wounded and strange. Richie can’t help it.  _ I can’t,  _ Richie thinks,  _ I can’t, I can’t,  _ and cups Eddie’s heartbeat through his back like a baby bird. 

“You’re dressing tastes fucking disgusting,” Eddie murmurs. 

Oh, Richie loves him. He huffs a breath and dips his head down, burying his nose in the soft hairs above Eddie’s ear, and lets himself laugh. His eyes burn. 

Eddie hums. His hands flex on Richie’s waist, warm and sure.

“Wanna go home?” Eddie asks him. 

“Yeah,” Richie murmurs. He reaches blindly for Eddie’s hand and Eddie gives it to him. “Yeah, let’s go home.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It makes Richie fumble with the pepper grinder when he feels Eddie’s fond eyes on the back of his neck. When he hears the smile in Eddie’s voice as he says, “Yeah, Rich springs me outta the office for lunch dates every now and then. Only thing keeping me from going on a fucking murder spree, I swear to god. Don’t know what I’d do without him.”
> 
> Richie wants, horrifyingly, to cry. He doesn’t. He keeps it together and makes some goddamn garlic bread.

Two guys walk into a bar. 

The first guy says Shit, Shit, I knew that was there, and he holds his fingers up to his forehead to feel his tender skin split like a peach dropped on the ground, fingers hot with blood, a stinging kind of hurt that rings all the way down to his core, his pit, his hungry aching wanting yawning wanting pulling reaching wanting deepening  _ wanting _ . 

The second guy ducks. 

*

Richie knows it isn’t real but that doesn’t make it better. 

He sits up fast, heart pounding like a jackhammer, and when he buries his face in his hands he feels the hot wetness on his cheeks, leaking down his temples. His breath beats a jagged rhythm on the inside of his wrists. 

Richie’s gotten better at having quiet nightmares. 

As he sits here in the bruise-purple stillness of his bedroom, the images flash through his mind again like a string of gory snapshots. It’s always the same thing. Eddie, crouched above him with something unnameable in his eyes. That claw, a fucking skewer from hell, swiping down toward him so fast that Richie can’t even say anything. The sound Eddie had made, sharp and shredded like an animal when he’d been run through the shoulder. The next sound he’d made, bigger, worse, when Richie’s delayed panic had kicked in and he’d rolled them both away, hurling them down onto the rocky surface so hard that Richie can still feel the ache of his hip when he gets cold. Eddie’s blood. On Richie’s shoulders, hands, mouth, cheeks. 

In the nightmare, they don’t get Eddie to a hospital in time. 

In the nightmare, he dies beneath Richie. In the nightmare, there’s hate in his eyes when he does it. 

The end changes. Sometimes they leave Eddie behind, small and crumpled like a discarded doll, and Richie screams himself ragged as Neibolt collapses down onto him. 

Tonight was, admittedly, one of the better ones. Tonight Richie wouldn’t let go of him. Tonight Richie buried his face in Eddie’s skin, listened to the pulse in his throat die, and when the house fell, it buried both of them. 

“Jesus Christ,” Richie says out loud. He shoves off his blankets. He grabs his glasses. He moves to the door. 

The apartment is just as still as his room had been, the city shining through the curtains Eddie draws around their windows every evening and giving the place a violet hue. Everything is blurry, ill-defined—Richie’s fuck-off bad eyes take a while to adjust even with his glasses on, and they’re still a little blurry with tears—but he’s lived here long enough that he’s able to navigate his way around their things and make it to the kitchen without turning on a light. 

Their things. His and Eddie’s things. Because Eddie asked Richie to move here with him a year ago and Richie did and Eddie is alive. 

_ Alive,  _ Richie thinks, reaching for a mug.  _ Alive, alive.  _

It’s four in the morning, but he isn’t gonna sleep anymore tonight. Tomorrow’s Sunday anyway, and Sunday’s a napping day. Every idiot knows that.

He makes a pot of coffee. 

The thing about the nightmares, Richie thinks, is that his subconscious can’t even manage to drum up something more horrifying than what they all went through. Sure, Eddie dies in Richie’s dreams, but that’s so close to what nearly happened that it isn’t even creative. He just gets the same two options over and over again. 

_ Eddie dies. You leave him.  _

_ Eddie dies. So do you.  _

Richie knows what he would have done if Eddie’s pulse hadn’t still been beating when they hit the ground. Knows it in his bones. It’s not a question; just an alternate reality.

“One that didn’t happen,” he mutters to himself, and wills his hands to be still so he can pour the cream. “So settle the fuck down, Trashmouth.”

He hears Eddie’s door open right as he’s perching himself on the edge of the counter, coffee clutched in his hands. Briefly he considers getting down so Eddie doesn’t yell at him, but then he decides that maybe what he needs right now is to be yelled at by Eddie Kaspbrak, so he stays. 

Eddie’s eyes meet his across the living room, glimmering softly with the little bit of light that spills in.

Right away, Richie knows he isn’t going to be yelled at. Eddie’s eyebrows do something soft and tilting, and his hair is messy and his pajamas—because he’s wearing a fucking pajama set, because he’s fucking eighty years old—look warm and cozy, and Richie has to tell himself sternly not to stumble across the room and wrap Eddie up in his arms and seek out the sound of his heartbeat like a promise. 

“Hey,” Eddie murmurs, and stops just shy of Richie’s knees. His voice doesn’t break the hush. “Nightmare?”

Usually Richie would play it off. But Eddie is so close, and Richie can see the tendril of his scar snaking like a vine up his sternum, under the edge of his collar. He nods. 

Eddie shuffles closer. He’s sleepy-eyed, and his skin is warm when he touches Richie’s wrist. “Wanna talk about it?”

“No,” says Richie, because he’s a fucking liar, and then, “I would have stayed down there with you.”

Eddie goes still. “Rich,” he says. 

Richie can’t look at him. He watches the steam rising from his coffee, slow and translucent. 

Eddie has nightmares too, Richie knows. Which fucking—which makes sense because  _ he’s  _ the one who got turned into clown shish kebab, he’s the one who was hospitalized for two weeks,he’s the one who still goes to physical therapy once a month a year and a half later and has a scar across his front and back that’ll never leave him. Richie hears him through the wall sometimes. He always goes in to check on him, and sometimes Eddie asks him to stay. 

“Sorry,” Richie says, “I guess. Or. I don’t know.”

“Rich,” Eddie says again. He takes the cup out of Richie’s hands, and then he steps forward, arms going around Richie’s waist. 

Richie sits still for a moment, Eddie’s face pressed to his neck, Eddie’s torso between his thighs. 

“None of our friends would have let you,” Eddie says, and it’s those words that make Richie wrap Eddie up in his own arms as tight as he can, like he’ll shift away into mist if Richie doesn’t hold on, like something’s still waiting in the wings to take him away. “Because I wouldn’t have wanted you to.”

Richie doesn’t think they could have stopped him. He would have stayed even if Eddie had begged him to go. 

“Yeah,” Richie rasps, something all caught up in his throat, tight as a ball of string. “Maybe.”

Eddie steps back, and Richie wants to reach out for him again but he doesn’t. Eddie’s frown is tremendous. “We love you, Rich.”

“Shit,” says Richie. He thrusts his hands up under his glasses to wipe at his eyes and then just leaves them there, his shoulders around his ears. “Christ, Eds.”

Down there on the floor, Richie hears Eddie’s quiet hum. He hates when Eddie says stuff like that. He hates it, and he tilts himself toward it like a flower seeking sun. 

“Too much to handle?” Eddie asks him. He’s still in the V of Richie’s thighs, hands on Richie’s hips. One of his thumbs has strayed beneath Richie’s t-shirt but above the line of his boxers, warm on his skin, and Eddie probably doesn’t even notice it but Richie feels like all of his awareness lives in that one point of contact, like his center of gravity has moved there, like he’ll look in the mirror in the morning and see Eddie’s thumbprint branded on his hip. 

It’s nighttime. Richie is allowed to do things now that the day won’t allow. 

“Come here,” he says, hooking his hands over Eddie’s shoulders and tugging him back in. 

Eddie should absolutely make fun of him. He doesn’t. Maybe he knows Richie needs to hold him just a while longer, just to know he’s real. 

Time passes. Richie can hear the clock ticking in the living room. Richie can hear the even pace of Eddie’s breath: in, out, in, out. 

“Sorry I woke you up,” Richie murmurs finally. 

Eddie hums again. Slower, sleepier, like maybe he’s been dozing off here on his feet. The thought makes Richie smile. 

“Yeah, ‘m clearly pissed as hell,” Eddie mutters. He’s tracing a slow circle over Richie’s ribs. “And obviously think you’re the worst.”

“Ooh, Spaghetti gets off a good one,” Richie says. There’s a little bit of Eddie’s hair in his mouth but Richie’s at the point where he doesn’t fucking care. “Look at you go, funnyman.”

Eddie shifts in his arms. Gives him an extra squeeze. “Shut the fuck up,” he says. “I’m comforting you.”

Richie scoffs, but it’s weak at best. Eddie’s absolutely right. 

By the time they let go, Richie's coffee is cold. He pops it in the microwave, and the back of his neck goes hot in a pleasant way when Eddie rolls his eyes. He’s a slut for Eddie being incensed by the completely normal things he does. 

He grabs Eddie’s favorite mug from the cabinet—white with little dogs all over it, courtesy of Ben—and holds it up with his eyebrows raised until Eddie shrugs and says “Why not.”

“That’s the spirit, Eds, my little party animal,” Richie says. “My little coffee drinking badass.”

“I would suggest that you’re going insane from a lack of sleep but this is just how you always are,” Eddie says, leading Richie into the living room. 

“Oh, Eds,” Richie says. Eddie looks so warm and inviting sitting in the corner of their couch that Richie wants to barge in and bury himself in Eddie’s lap. He doesn’t do that. “You wouldn’t have me any other way.”

Eddie doesn’t answer him. But when Richie looks at him, he smiles. 

Eddie surfs through the channels until they find one playing reruns of  _ The Twilight Zone  _ and he settles on that, turning it down low. 

It’s five in the morning. Richie’s mug radiates warmth, from his hands up to his heart. 

He closes his eyes. 

*

“Hey,” says Eddie, and shoves his phone up under Richie’s nose. “Look at that.”

Richie backs up a couple steps so he can see, squinting down at the screen, pulling their cart to the edge of the aisle so they won’t be in the way of other shoppers. Eddie keeps his brightness up to a damaging degree. 

It’s a tweet from an account Richie doesn’t recognize, a couple hundred likes on it.  _ i’m pretty sure i saw richie tozier and his boyfriend (???) at lunch the other day??? i was behind richie so i’m not positive, but the other guy looked exactly like that man he was with in those pictures, and they kissed in the doorway and again outside the building. cute as fuck if true  _

Richie’s caught between mortification that somebody watched them and relief that they did, because that’s the whole reason Richie and Eddie decided to do this fake dating thing anyway. Publicity. Right? 

“How’d you find this?” he asks. 

To Richie’s surprise, Eddie goes a little red. He snatches his phone back. “I searched your name,” he mutters. 

Richie says, delightedly, “Eddie!”

“Well!” Eddie answers. His eyes are very wide. “I like to know what people are saying!” 

“Aw  _ Eds, _ ” Richie says, “Oh my  _ god. _ ”

“Shut your mouth and pay attention to the tweet,” Eddie grumbles. 

“Paying attention,” Richie says. He smiles at Eddie. “I swear.”

“It’s fucking good,” Eddie says. He shoves his phone in his back pocket, but Richie notices that he doesn’t close out of the app. “That people saw. The more people who think I’m your boyfriend the better.”

“Yeehaw,” says Richie, and then because he hates himself, “hey, do you think we should hold hands here?”

Eddie blinks at him. “Oh,” he says, and wipes his palms off on his thighs. Richie loves him. “Uh, sure.”

They’ve held hands often enough in the past few days that it’s just a hair far away enough from earth-shattering that Richie doesn’t have a panic attack as they check out and take their groceries to the car. He doesn’t have a panic attack when Eddie kisses him on the cheek after they load up the trunk, and he doesn’t have a panic attack when Eddie takes his hand  _ again  _ once they’re inside the car, fingers laced over the console, but when Eddie leans across the space between their seats and places an ill-aimed kiss on the corner of Richie’s mouth, his heart nearly leaps out of his chest. 

“Laying it on a bit think aren’t we, Eds?” he asks. He is holding onto the collar of Eddie’s coat, turning his face toward Eddie’s mouth in case he tries something like that again. He just can’t stop saying stupid shit. 

“We’re in a vehicle with glass windows on every side, shithead,” Eddie says. “Anybody could be looking in.”

“Oh,” says Richie. His heart is beating in his fucking  _ tongue.  _ “Well, in that case, let’s give ‘em a show.”

Eddie kisses like he does everything else, which is to say with all the purpose in his little body. 

He starts off slow, gentle, deliberate. Gearing up for him. An incoming storm. He brushes his mouth over Richie’s and Richie goes shivery-soft, spine unfurling on a sigh, sinking forward toward Eddie like he does every time they touch. 

“Good,” Eddie murmurs, and Richie doesn’t know what he means but it lights him up like a bonfire. 

There’s something inside Richie. It’s got a mouth, and it hasn’t been fed. 

Eddie’s hands fall to Richie’s hips, move like wildfire to his waist and the soft swell of his stomach. Richie tenses, sucks in automatically: Eddie makes a small hushing noise but doesn’t linger, moves up to Richie’s chest, and then his shoulders, and then his neck. 

Richie feels like he’s running into traffic. Richie feels like Eddie is whacking Richie’s heart in its metaphorical kneecaps with a fencepost. Richie clings onto Eddie, and when Eddie nudges his lips apart and slips his tongue in alongside Richie’s it’s with such determination that Richie fucking swoons even though he’s sitting down. 

A hand on the side of Richie’s neck, one wound in the small curls at the tender base of Richie’s skull. Eddie tugs on them gently and Richie makes a puppyish noise, mortifying and entirely impossible to hold back. Eddie laughs a humid puff of air against Richie’s cheek. He noses at Richie’s chin and tugs his head back again: Richie goes like a ragdoll, eyes slamming shut at the feeling of Eddie’s mouth on his collarbone. 

“Don’t make fun of me,” Richie whispers, tellingly feeble. He can’t stop touching Eddie, grabbing at his shoulders, stroking his palms down Eddie’s strong forearms. “I haven’t been kissed in a long time.”

Eddie hums against his pulse. His fingers scratch at Richie’s scalp. Richie is  _ not  _ breathing. 

“Guess I gotta make up for that,” murmurs Eddie. “Don’t I?”

_ Hi, God,  _ Richie thinks.  _ It’s me, Richie. Take me now.  _

When Richie’s one good heartbeat away from tugging Eddie over the console and into his lap, small confines of his car be damned, Eddie pulls away. 

Richie forces his hands into his lap so he doesn’t hold on. 

Eddie watches him for a moment. He’s got black coffee eyes, and they trawl Richie’s face like they’re looking for something, a slow-moving inventory of whatever fucking gagging-for-it expression Richie’s probably wearing. Just as slow, Eddie smiles. 

God, he’s a sexy motherfucker. Little 1940s movie star looking ass. 

Richie wants Eddie to break him into little pieces and carry him around in his pockets. Richie wants Eddie to want him back. 

“Alright,” Eddie says. “Cool.”

Richie nearly chokes on his incredulity. He says,  _ “Cool?  _ God, if I said shit like that you’d deck me.  _ Gee, Richie, it sure was neato-mosquito neckin’ with you in the parking lot.  _ Fuck, Eds.” __

Eddie rolls his eyes. He stops touching Richie and touches the steering wheel instead. “Shut up,” he says. 

“Eddie my love, you know it’s genetically impossible for me to do so.”

“Huh,” says Eddie. He starts to pull out of their parking spot. Richie’s still shaking. “I don’t remember your mom being this chatty.”

Richie’s had numberless panic attacks in his life. He wonders if he’s about to have another one. His heart’s crawling its way out of his ribs. 

Eddie drives them home and Richie tries not to yearn too badly at the way Eddie yells at other drivers doing normal road things a little bit too slowly. He fails. 

*

So Eddie does stuff like kiss him now. 

Usually in public, which is bad—Richie’s never been so aware of his body, of how much space he takes up, of whether or not he holds Eddie too close, of if he looks like he’s enjoying it enough, of if he looks like he’s enjoying it  _ too much _ —but sometimes at home, which is worse. 

Like now. Today. Richie is making coffee before Eddie goes to work and Eddie shuffles up to him, still sleep-tousled, and kisses the corner of Richie’s mouth like they do it every day. 

They absolutely don’t do it every day. Richie flinches in an invisible place, eyes drifting closed. Eddie smells like his shower, and under that, sleep. 

Eddie drops his face into the crook of Richie’s neck. He sighs. 

“Good morning, Eds,” Richie says. His voice is too low, too soft, too raw. He has a hand cupped around Eddie’s elbow and he didn’t even realize. “Somebody’s sleepy.”

“Don’t wanna go to work,” Eddie says, and even though Richie’s having a personal crisis, he smiles at the grumpiness in Eddie’s tone. Eddie’s always been a late riser. It takes a good hour and several cups of coffee to get him to really wake up in the mornings, and Richie is impossibly fond. “Everybody there is stupid and bad at their job.”

“Yesterday you were telling me you like the kids on your team.”

Eddie makes a beastly noise, part groan, part growl. 

“Do it for the kids, Eds,” Richie says, and hopes Eddie can’t hear his heart through the thin layer of his t-shirt. “Be a good role model.”

“Don’t wanna be a good role model,” Eddie mutters, and turns so his lips graze Richie’s neck as he speaks, soft and warm. His hands are dangerously close to sneaking up beneath the hem of Richie’s t-shirt and pressing flat against his skin. “Wanna stay right here.”

_ Then stay,  _ Richie thinks. Eddie’s cuffs are unbuttoned, flapping softly around the turn of his wrists. Richie takes in a breath that shakes. 

“Gotta, Eds,” Richie says. A hitch in his voice. Fuck. “You’re the breadwinner in this relationship.” 

Eddie pinches him. “Ok, Quentin Tarantino.”

“Not your best, Spaghetti,” Richie says fondly. 

Another pinch. What a little shit. His hair smells good, like fruit. “You’re a movie star and shit,” he says. “Or so I fucking assumed. The fuck else’ve you been doing in all those meetings?”

“Giving head for fame,” Richie says. It’s not  _ his  _ best, either, but to be fair he’s a little compromised here. “It hasn’t gotten me very far, I’m just a writer, apparently I’ve gotta get better techniques before they’ll cast me. Tragic. I’m a hottie with a body and they’re missing out.”

“All those old producer dudes are straight,” Eddie says, “You can’t fool me.”

“You think a straight guy would give up the chance to get a BJ from these lips?” Richie exclaims, and purses them dramatically when Eddie pulls away to glare at him. Richie winks. “Just close your eyes and make sure ya can’t hear me and I can be anybody, baby, I can be a  _ star. _ ”

“You are the worst.” Eddie steps away finally, looking disgusted but awake. Richie crosses his arms, suddenly cold, and watches him pour their coffee. “Just, absolutely a rancid human being.”

Richie grins when Eddie hands him his mug. “Yeah.”

A huffy little sigh. Richie can see the smile caught in the corners of his mouth, though. 

“So about that movie,” Eddie says. He leans a hip against the counter, pushed all up in Richie’s space. Richie wants to touch the hair at his temples that’s still wet from a shower, wants to smell the soap smell out of his skin. Wants Eddie to kiss him again. “I’m still your big date for the premier, right?”

Richie’s heart misses a couple steps on its way down. “Yeah, dude,” he says, and wants to cringe at the un-date-liness of that word but forces his face muscles to stay still. “Yeah, that’s the plan, right? This whole plan. Was that. To do that.”

“It was, yeah,” Eddie says slowly. “And then you started making a face like a serial killer and now you won’t meet my eyes.”

Richie sticks his tongue out at Eddie, but he does look up. “Fuck you,” he says, “I can be nervous.”

Eddie softens, slight enough that you’d miss it if you didn’t spend ungodly amounts of time cataloguing the shifts of his microexpressions like some sort of eighteen-hundred’s scientist. “You don’t have to be nervous, Rich,” he says. 

What is it about the two of them, that Richie always ends up having to bear his entire fucking soul any time they’re in the kitchen together? Is it because they’re gay?

“Thank you, Eddie my love,” he says. “That’s kind, and also not something you can prove.”

“Hey,” Eddie says, and frowns. This is his I Care About You, Asshole frown. It never fails to make Richie want to tear his own face off. “I don’t have to prove it, because you already did. You got the fucking gig. You wrote the fucking movie, and they  _ made  _ the fucking movie. You’re amazing. Fuckwad.”

Richie says, “Oh, god, Eds,  _ please, _ ” and goes to the living room so he can bury his head in the couch. 

Eddie wanders over to him a little while later, coffee consumed, shoes on. The couch dips as he sits by Richie’s hip. 

Richie turns his face on the cushion to squint up at him with one eye, glasses askew. 

Like he had in the car a few days ago, Eddie is just… he’s just  _ looking  _ at Richie. A swath of sunlight cuts through the living room and catches him up in its glow, turning his skin gold, his hair bronze. His eyes stay the same. Dark, wide, trained on Richie above a very slight smile. 

For one moment Richie feels desperately, terribly, shatteringly lonely. 

“I think I should start complimenting you instead of insulting you,” Eddie says. “It seems to do the trick more effectively.”

“Nooo.” Richie manages to turn over onto his back without knocking Eddie off the couch, looking up at him with probably a very attractive double chin. He reaches for Eddie’s sleeve. Holds on. “Mean Eddie you have to stay, I love you wholeheartedly.”

It’s a little too close to the truth. That feeling inside of him is back: bright red gums, needle-sharp teeth. 

Richie thinks of that book his mother used to read to him as a kid.  _ I’ll eat you up, I love you so.  _

“You’re an idiot,” Eddie says, and then, “and you’re really talented and I’m proud of you for coming so far in the past few years.”

“Oh what the fuck,” Richie breathes, face burning, “what the  _ fuck. _ ”

Eddie laughs, quiet, maybe a little sad. Fifteen minutes ago he couldn’t even stand up straight and now he’s in here dealing fucking  _ lethal praise.  _ He can’t be human. 

He used to do that when they were kids, too. When Richie would get on one of his long, self-deprecating runs, twisting everything into a joke and making even himself laugh. When Richie would parrot what the Bowers Gang liked to yell at him out loud, as if somehow saying it about himself would make it funny, instead of just making him believe it was true. 

_ Don’t say that shit,  _ Eddie would tell him, little and wiry and fierce, and grab Richie’s hand in the middle of the road on their way home from school. Richie used to think he was so brave for that. Still does.  _ Don’t say that shit. You’re my best friend.  _

He’s still Richie’s best friend. No matter what else. 

“Eddie,” Richie says now, embarrassed by the tightness in his throat. He needs to say it, suddenly. “I’m proud of you too.”

Eddie smiles at him, soft and quiet. “Thanks, Rich.”

Richie nods. Closes his eyes, and keeps them closed until Eddie’s gone. 

*

Richie wakes to a text from Stan. A link. With trepidation, Richie clicks. 

It leads him to an article, as he thought it would, and he spies his own name in the headline immediately. 

**Comedian Richie Tozier and Boyfriend Spotted Grocery Shopping**

This one isn’t even a picture of their kiss in the car, which means that Eddie made out with him like that for nothing, which makes Richie feel…  _ something.  _ Instead, it’s the two of them in the produce aisle, Richie leaning against the cart with a soppy expression as he watches Eddie hold up two mangoes, mouth open as he lectures on about ripeness levels or size or health benefits or something that Richie definitely isn’t taking in. Eddie looks feral and lovely. Richie looks like he’d die for him. 

**Richie**

see something you like? 

**stangelina jolie**

You look like an idiot. 

A very lovestruck idiot. 

**Richie**

and how does that make you feel darling?

**stangelina jolie**

Happy for you. 

Richie smiles at his phone, smiles, and ignores the sour voice in the back of his head that tells him to be guilty.

*

“You look sexy in blue. It makes your eyes pop and your shoulders look like goal posts.”

Richie laughs out loud at that, one eye on the risotto he’s stirring and the other on Bev, who is grinning up at him from the iPad he’s got propped against the toaster. “Fucking—goal posts, Beverly? I gotta say, that doesn’t  _ sound  _ sexy.”

“Well it wouldn’t to you,” Bev says. She waggles her eyebrows. “You’re more into the slender type, aren’t you?”

Richie doesn’t bother denying it. There wouldn’t be a point to it even if they  _ didn’t  _ all think he and Eddie were together, because Richie has spent ninety-five percent of their time as a group staring at Eddie with his tongue lolling down to his knees like a cartoon dog staring at a porkchop. 

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” he says with affection. He adds another cup of stock to his risotto, pouring carefully so it doesn’t splash. Eddie just cleaned the stove yesterday. “I guess if Beverly Marsh says I’m sexy, I’m fucking sexy.”

“You betcha,” she says. “So suck it up and wear the suit.”

It isn’t that Richie doesn’t want to wear the suit Bev designed for him. As someone who knows less than nothing, he can say with confidence that it’s a beautiful outfit—each time he’s tried it on it’s fit him like a glove, the material is a soft, dark blue velvet that’s somehow not gaudy even though the words  _ velvet suit  _ make Richie think of a gigolo with a handlebar mustache snorting a line of cocaine in somebody’s L.A. bathroom, and the satin trim in a slightly darker shade of blue is sleek as the surface of a lake. Even the crisp white undershirt she has picked out for him is classy. It’s a very nice ensemble. 

It feels too nice for Richie. 

“Is he fucking trying to get out of this again?” Eddie complains, coming into the kitchen with a frown for Richie and a smile for Bev. He just got back from work so he’s dressed down in a t-shirt and sweatpants, wet hair dripping onto his collar. His skin is hot-water-pink. “He keeps doing that. Hi Bev.”

“Hi hon. He thinks he’s going to ruin it just by putting it on.”

“I know,” Eddie sighs. He’s leaning all up in Richie’s space so he can see Bev, too, and the muscles in his forearms stand out in sharp relief, flexing as he holds himself up. Richie’s mouth is dry. “Someday I’m gonna get this man some self-esteem.”

Richie makes a spluttering kind of sound. Eddie doesn’t look at him, but the edge of his mouth tugs in Richie’s direction. A hint of a smile.

Bev is saying something—agreeing, probably, the traitor—but Richie can’t stop watching Eddie. The tilt of his head, the way his eyebrows get low and soft when he really smiles.  _ I’m gonna get this man some self-esteem.  _

Richie kisses him in the cheek. 

“Oh,” says Eddie, quiet, and looks up at him, but it’s drowned out by the sound of Beverly’s melodramatic cooing. 

Richie looks back. Keeps his hand on the round point of Eddie’s shoulder, fingertips grazing the crook of his neck. 

“I’m so happy for you guys,” Beverly says, effectively pulling Richie’s attention back to her. He feels himself startle, positive his face has gone fucking purple or something. She is looking right at him, and there’s something in her smile that he can’t quite name. “You deserve it.”

“Thanks, Bev,” says Eddie. He moves to put an arm around Richie’s waist and Richie  _ knows  _ it’s just for show, knows it’s because Bev is right there and they need to reinforce this illusion as much as possible, but something in him softens anyway. Pressing down on a bruise. “Sorry you all had to find out the way you did, by the way,” Eddie adds. “Fucking paparazzi.”

She laughs. “That’s ok, it was adorable. Ben wanted to print the photo out and frame it and I’m not actually sure I’ve managed to stop him.”

Eddie and Bev keep talking as Richie finishes up dinner, listening to them idly. Eddie is talking about him and Richie easily which isn’t weird because they’ve lived together for so long now, but—but he’s not just talking about them as Richie and Eddie: Roommates. He is full on Richie and Eddie: Couple-ing it right now. 

Weird still isn’t the word Richie would use for it. Agonizing, maybe. 

It makes Richie fumble with the pepper grinder when he feels Eddie’s fond eyes on the back of his neck. When he hears the smile in Eddie’s voice as he says, “Yeah, Rich springs me outta the office for lunch dates every now and then. Only thing keeping me from going on a fucking murder spree, I swear to god. Don’t know what I’d do without him.”

Richie wants, horrifyingly, to cry. He doesn’t. He keeps it together and makes some goddamn garlic bread. 

Eddie wanders over to him when Bev signs off, and trails his hand up the bumps of Richie’s spine. “Smells good,” he says. 

There is something about Eddie like this, home from work, stripped down to a comfortable and private and uncomplicated level. Bare skin and old clothes and wet hair. He’s tired, but he’s spending time with Richie anyway. 

Richie’s voice wavers, but he pushes through. “I make-a the risotto,” he says weakly. 

If Eddie notices Richie’s strange breakdown, he doesn’t comment upon it. “Thanks, Chef.” 

“Ah, to be called ze Chef,” Richie sighs, switching from a terrible Italian accent to an even worse French one. He clutches his chest and brandishes his spoon. “When I am but a poor home cook, too destitute to afford even ze pasta for my boyfriend. Alas, I must stick to rice. Alas, my dreams of being Pastry Chef for ze great Gordon Ramsey creep one day closer to the grave.”

Eddie doesn’t even pretend to be amused, which is one of the reasons Richie would take a bullet for him. The more prickly Eddie is, the deeper Richie falls. It’s very fucked up of him if he does say so himself, but also not even close to being the  _ most  _ fucked up thing about him. So he lets it slide.

*

Richie’s phone buzzes right as he’s about to fall asleep that night, which lets him know that he’s somehow stretched out on top of it. Blearily, he squirms around until he makes contact, and brings it up to his face so he can squint at the screen. 

**Miss Scarlet**

hey richie. do you have a moment to talk? sorry, i know it’s late. 

He frowns, sits up fast enough that he gets a little dizzy because he’s fucking ancient apparently, manages to find his glasses without turning a light on. Bev never texts him so vaguely—she’s usually almost as blunt as Eddie. This can’t be good. 

**Richie**

good golly miss molly. everything ok? 

you? ben? 

**Miss Scarlet**

yeah hon we’re ok, sorry to be so cryptic

i thought about not saying anything but i just think you’d rather know so i didn’t wanna wait 

Well this fucking sucks. It must be something he’s done. His heart still pounds too fast as he sits back against the headboard.

**Richie**

bev the suspense is literally killing me 

**Miss Scarlet**

right ok ok sorry 

so 

i’m not sure how to say this but i want you to know that you’re secret’s safe with me and also you don’t have to give me an explanation or anything but 

i know you’re not really dating eddie 

Richie nearly drops his phone. 

He supposes he shouldn’t be so surprised. He knows he was acting weird earlier on that call with Bev—too thoughtful, quieter than he ever fucking is, entirely too infatuated with Eddie for someone who has apparently been dating him for… what? A month? Is that what their story is? 

Jesus, he doesn’t even have a convincing lie. 

His phone buzzes again in his hand and he forces his jaw to unclench, forces his stomach to untie itself, forces his gaze down. 

**Miss Scarlet**

richie? still there? 

god i’m sorry i shouldn't have said it 

**Richie**

no need to apologize bevvy i’m just wallowing in the downfall of my own hubris 

can i ask how you knew

**Miss Scarlet**

little things. things nobody else would pick up on, and i’m not just saying that

you were looking at each other the same way you always do. like you’re both seeing something you know you’ll never get to have. i just know you two so well. i know you’d look at him differently if it was real 

**Richie**

are you mad

**Miss Scarlet**

absolutely not 

i see the things people say about you online, so i can guess why you guys are doing this. it wouldn’t have been my first plan, but i can see it’s working. plus it’s your business. 

eddie isn’t the only one who gets pissed when people talk shit about you, you know :)

He does know. He also knows that any of his friends would have done something to get Richie out of the situation he was in—even if, like Beverly said, their first instinct wouldn’t have been to kiss him on the fucking mouth. 

Maybe it means something that Eddie’s was. Richie isn’t even prepared to contemplate that possibility right now. 

**Richie**

i have the best fucking friends

i’m sorry to ask you to keep this secret. it’s just until my premiere tho 

**Miss Scarlet**

i think i’ll manage. what are you doing after the premiere? 

**Richie**

uhhhhh lololol 

**Miss Scarlet**

HAVE YOU NOT TALKED ABOUT IT? 

“Fuck,” Richie whispers a bit hysterically into the darkness of his room, and laughs against his palm, muffling it so Eddie won’t hear. This can’t be his real life. This can’t possibly be a real situation that he’s found himself in. 

**Richie**

I MEAN NOT REALLY?

like 

i’m assuming we’ll break up

we’ll probably definitely break up 

right? 

bev 

**Miss Scarlet**

richard i am not your fucking bOYFRIEND so i don’t KNOW 

sweetie. you need to talk to him. 

**Richie**

i have to tell you something. 

**Miss Scarlet**

anything. 

**Richie**

i am like. 100% in love with him. 

**Miss Scarlet**

… 

is it rude of me to say i expected so? 

Another laugh, hidden in his hand. A little sadder. He wants to creep across the hallway and crawl into Eddie’s bed and just lay there, still and warm above Eddie’s covers, listening to him breathe. That’s  _ insane  _ shit. 

**Richie**

not at all. 

*

“Nervous?” Eddie asks him. 

Richie, whose hands are shaking as he attempts to tie his tie, says, “No, why the fuck would you ask that,” and avoids Eddie’s eyes in the mirror.

Eddie laughs softly from behind him. He says, “Richie.”

They’re in the dressing room of the talk show Richie’s about to go onstage for. Richie is so nervous that his hands sweat as he tugs at his tie, fingers slipping off the silk and probably staining it. 

This’ll be the first time Richie’s appeared publicly in an official setting for almost two years now. He hasn’t done any shows since before Derry Part Two: Electric Boogaloo, and he certainly hasn’t given any interviews. 

But his premier is in three days, and Richie’s pretty sure that his agent would’ve hunted him for sport if he didn’t at least attempt to drum up some public interest. 

Richie casts a critical eye over himself. He’s in another Bev suit, although it isn’t the blue one she seems so hyped about—just plain black, boring if not for the button up shirt with little gray dinosaurs he wheedled her into letting him wear underneath. He looks—fine, he looks as good as he expected to look. Hair and makeup did a good job. He doesn’t notice anything particularly sexy about his shoulders. 

“Richie,” says Eddie again, a little more firmly, and turns Richie around by the shoulders. Richie goes, hands going still. “Let me do that, you’re gonna choke yourself.”

Eddie nudges Richie’s hands out of the way and starts working on Richie’s tie with nimble fingers, loosening the silk that Richie only now realizes he’d tied around his throat like a noose. 

“Oh,” says Richie dumbly. “Thanks, Eds.”

Eddie flicks his gaze up to meet Richie’s, then back down. He’s very close. 

Sharp teeth and a hungry mouth. 

“You don’t hafta be nervous, Rich,” Eddie says. His voice is a bit softer now, as close as he is, and Richie wants to sway down and press his ear to Eddie’s mouth. “Just get in, talk about your movie, talk about me, and get out.”

Eddie tugs gently on Richie’s tie, straightening it out. “Talk about you?” Richie echoes. 

“Well, I mean.” Eddie shrugs. His hands fall to rest on Richie’s shoulders, the soft curve at the base of his neck. Easy weights that ground him. “That’s what we’ve been doing all this for, right? This interview’ll reach the four people who haven’t seen something about you on Twitter, and maybe then all their homophobic asses will get over themselves.”

_ I love you,  _ Richie thinks. “Eds, you’re such a sexy little genius,” he murmurs. 

When Eddie kisses him, Richie’s chest strains. He wants to say that he  _ doesn’t  _ know what all this is for. He wants to say that they’ve lost the plot completely, that kissing your buddy once or twice in front of some dicks with a camera is one thing but kissing him where no one can see is quite another, that if Eddie asked, Richie would kiss him every day until they die. 

He doesn’t say any of that. Because if he did, Eddie would stop. 

“You look great,” Eddie says when Richie turns toward the mirror one last time to adjust his hair. He frowns when Richie shrugs him off, stepping in close and fitting his palms around Richie’s waist, and Richie goes still. “I mean it, Rich,” he says. “You look amazing.”

Richie’s mouth is dry. “Thanks, Eds,” he murmurs. 

Eddie kisses the skin of Richie’s neck, right over the fold of his collar, and Richie shivers down to his toes. 

“Eddie,” Richie says. He sounds too desperate but he can’t help it. He can’t help it at all. “Eddie—”

“Richie Tozier? You’re on in five.”

Richie glares at the person who interrupted them even though they’re just doing their fucking job, and immediately feels bad about it. “Go on,” Eddie says, and steps back, patting Richie on the hip. “Break a leg, baby.”

Richie wants to break something with his hands. He stumbles along after the Stage Manager, Eddie’s eyes dark and heavy in his mind. 

The interview is fine. The host is charismatic and good at getting Richie out of whatever nervous, overwhelmed state he’s managed to work himself into, laughing at the jokes Richie tells even if they aren’t funny, letting him talk about his movie and letting him talk about Eddie, which Richie probably does with a bit too much aplomb. He doesn’t quite know what he’s saying. The stage lights are bright, he’s sweaty beneath his suit, his smile is wide and forced, he doesn’t get a full inhale the whole time he’s up there, his heartbeat tastes like metal, and the feel of Eddie’s kiss on the back of his neck burns like he’s been branded. 

It’s over before Richie knows it. He walks offstage to the sound of thunderous applause, knees feeling like they’ve been replaced with applesauce, and Eddie is waiting for him in the wings. 

Eddie lets Richie walk right into him. Wraps Richie up in his arms, face pressed to his probably-sweaty hair. Holds him close. 

“Good job, sweetheart,” Eddie whispers. God. The second time he’s called Richie something like that in fifteen minutes, and nobody can even hear this one except Richie. Richie closes his eyes and tries to breathe. “So fucking good.”

Richie can’t answer. He thinks he might have said he loves Eddie out there on that stage. He knows that if he did, he meant it.

“Good,” Eddie says again, and Richie feels the shape of the word spoken against his skin. “Good.”

*

The middle of a joke should look like this: 

There’s a moment in everybody’s life when they realize that they’re a goddamn sad sack of a person. Maybe you’re sitting on your couch at seven in the evening watching  _ Jeopardy!  _ with your dog and you realize that getting the answer to “According to Billboard this sax man was the No. 1 instrumentalist of the 1990s” right (Who is Kenny G) is the happiest you’ve felt all fucking week. Maybe you’re getting lunch with some friends and one of them gives the other one that look—you know, that look, that look, fuckin’ big eyes and a sloppy smile—and you realize everybody you know is fucking each other. And it sucks, yeah, these all fucking suck so bad, but they aren’t the funniest, god, no, the funniest is when you’re forty-one and you’re standing in the kitchen and he kisses you or you’re taking a walk and he kisses you or you run to the bathroom during dinner and he gets up and he follows you and he presses you back into an empty stall and his hands are warm and searching and gentle but not shy, never shy, and he kisses you, and he’s your best friend (somebody carved you out of a piece of him, they must have) and you moved to New York City on a cloud of the dust he made up when he drove away, and the kicker is—the  _ fucking kicker is _ : 

You are forty-one and he kisses you and he’s your best friend and he’s the only person you’ve ever loved and he’s just doing because he thinks you need him to. 

And you do. You do. 

That’s the funniest. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for all your comments! they are feeding me during this long winter


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Walk me through it, Tozier.”
> 
> “Gladly, Eddie my love,” Richie says. “I’m kinda freaking out and would absolutely rather stay here tonight and not have to—to fucking, like, watch people watch other people say shit that I wrote.”
> 
> “I wanna watch people watch other people say shit that you wrote,” Eddie says. “And you’re my way in.”
> 
> “You’re hot,” Richie says, brave, brave, and pokes his abs, “I’m sure somebody’d be glad to walk in with you on their arm. Just ask.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for reading! this is the kindest fandom, i'm overwhelmed

“Good morning,” says Richie as Eddie trudges blearily into the kitchen. “I’m thinking maybe we shouldn’t go.”

“Oh my god,” Eddie mutters, and scrubs at his eyes with both hands. “I need coffee before I can deal with your existential crisis.”

“Understandable, please enjoy,” Richie says, and slides Eddie’s mug to him across the kitchen island. 

He watches Eddie drink—eyes squished closed, frowning a little after he swallows, the muscles of his throat working. Richie’s premiere is tonight. Richie has been up for two hours. Richie moves closer to Eddie like a cat seeking out affection, padding over quietly, and with his eyes still closed Eddie reaches out and curves his palm over the back of Richie’s neck, grounding and warm. 

It does feel better now that he’s awake. The alarm bells that’ve been blaring in Richie’s brain since he opened his eyes before dawn this morning fade to a more manageable level at Eddie’s touch. How fucking embarrassing. 

“Alright,” Eddie says finally. His coffee has been drained down to its dregs. He blinks up at Richie, a little more human, a little more aware, and sets his cup aside to free his other hand, which he places on Richie’s waist. “Walk me through it, Tozier.”

“Gladly, Eddie my love,” Richie says. “I’m kinda freaking out and would absolutely rather stay here tonight and not have to—to fucking, like, watch people watch other people say shit that  _ I  _ wrote.”

“ _ I  _ wanna watch people watch other people say shit that you wrote,” Eddie says. “And you’re my way in.”

“You’re hot,” Richie says, brave, brave, and pokes his abs, “I’m sure somebody’d be glad to walk in with you on their arm. Just ask.”

“I’m not gonna fucking proposition the people who worked on my boyfriend’s film just so I can go see it, idiot,” Eddie says, and Richie’s heart falls into the pit of his stomach at the word, Richie feels like somebody’s kicked his legs out from beneath him. Eddie doesn’t seem to notice. “Plus I wanna show you off.” The edge of his mouth curves up. “I want people to know I’m with the guy who wrote a script that’s good as hell.”

Jesus. Jesus Christ, this guy just knows how to push all Richie’s tender little buttons. 

“Spaghetti, I just don’t wish to be perceived,” Richie says. All morning he hasn’t been able to think of something worse than sitting in a theater full of people whose attention all hinges on his words and his words alone. It’s  _ different  _ than doing stand up: Richie isn’t the one up there telling his own jokes, able to divert attention from what he’s saying with big gestures and a stupid smile. None of that was really his, anyway. This is real. This is his. “At all.” 

“Tough shit,” Eddie says. Richie makes a protesting noise and Eddie pulls him in for a hug, quick and close. Richie inhales against him. “I’ll be right there with you,” Eddie says, “and if people don’t like it I’ll curbstomp all of them.”

It’s strangely comforting, these Eddie Kaspbrak Threats of Violence. “Alright,” Richie says finally. “Ok. I guess if I have that to fall back on.”

*

Eddie is about a million times better at being a celebrity than Richie is, and it’s sort of becoming a distraction. 

“Are you freaked out by the limo?” Richie asks him. They’re sitting side by side in the backseat, thighs pressed together even though there’s plenty of room on either side of the both of them, and Richie hasn’t stopped feeling like he’s lying to everybody about how important he really is since he caught sight off the vehicle. “What am I saying, you’re playing on your fucking phone, obviously you aren’t freaked out.”

Eddie looks up at him, smiling a bit. “I’m texting Mike,” he says. “He says to do the deep breathing exercises he taught us at Christmas.”

“Tell Mike that I love him, but that there’s so much going on in my brain right now that I couldn’t possibly add another thing to concentrate on.”

“That’s what the deep breathing is supposed to help you with, dumbass,” Eddie says, but he says it so fondly that Richie wants to lean over and bury his face in Eddie’s skin and never resurface. 

He watches Eddie sigh at the wide-eyed, definitely insane expression Richie’s staring at him with. Watches Eddie slide his phone into his pocket and turn inward on the bench seat, angling himself toward Richie. 

“I’m going to hold your hand,” Eddie says, and then he does.

The coil at the base of Richie’s spine unwinds, just slightly. “Thanks,” he says, and his voice carries too much air to even pretend at nonchalance.

“Sure thing,” says Eddie.

Richie can hear his own heartbeat hammering away at the inside scoop of his ribs.  _ Please turn around,  _ he thinks at the driver,  _ please, please, please _ — 

“So you’re clearly freaked out by the limo,” Eddie says. 

“Oh my god dude.” The words fall out of Richie on a rush of air. “It’s like—so fucking  _ fancy,  _ I feel like the goddamn  _ President. _ ”

Eddie laughs again, and something in the sound works to calm Richie down. Eddie is still holding his hand, so Richie lets himself cling a little. It’s good for his blood pressure.

“Well, lucky for you we’re almost there,” Eddie says, and traces a line that cuts across Richie’s palm absently, like following a trail. “And you won’t have to be in a limo anymore.”

“Nope, I’ll just have to stand around on the red carpet and not look like a fucking Sim,” Richie grumbles. 

This laugh is the loudest one. Richie’s insides do a private flip of victory, lit up gold with happiness. It’s an achievement every time he gets Eddie to laugh.

“I said that  _ one time, _ ” Eddie says. “And Stan was egging me on.”

Stan had found a bunch of old pictures of Richie at signings, greeting fans after shows, posing in front of marquees with his name stretched across them. Richie is stiff-armed and dead-eyed in every one, and does bear a disturbing resemblance to… like, fucking anybody from the Sims. Eddie and Stan are endlessly delighted by them. 

“Anyway,” Eddie says, “I’ll be right there with you so you won’t look so goddamn weird.”

“Are you gonna, like.” Richie can’t look at him suddenly: it’s like somebody has unzipped Richie from the top of his head down to his toes, and all his tender middle bits are on display. He peers out his window instead, watching the swarm of reporters and other celebrities draw closer as their driver slows to a stop. “Hold my hand and shit.”

“I told you,” Eddie says quietly. “I want to show you off.”

Richie thinks about what Bev said. About how he should just talk to Eddie. 

Too fucking late for that. 

They’re there before Richie can answer, tumbling out of the limo and into the throng of flashing lights and raised voices. Richie’s been on one or two red carpets before, but he’s never been such a focal point as is now: immediately he has microphones thrust in his face, questions posed to him over the din. 

Eddie links their arms together and then holds Richie’s hand on top of that. He smiles up at him. 

They make it through somehow. 

Eddie is quiet, mostly, standing at Richie’s side and probably taking more of Richie’s weight than he really wants to as he Richie runs his mouth and grins for photos and tries not to sweat so much that his glasses slip off his face. Occasionally there’s a question directed toward him, and Eddie answers with more politeness than Richie would’ve expected. 

“Eddie Kaspbrak, right?” A reporter asks, smiling a lipstick-smile up at them both. She’s short even in her heels, but her piping voice is loud enough to cut through all the racket. “You’ve certainly been the man on everybody’s mind lately.”

Eddie smiles, tipping his head down a little so she can hear him. “That’s right,” he says. Richie stares at him, unabashed, taking in how fucking lovely he looks in a gray suit that compliments Richie’s, his hair gelled nicely, a little bit of stubble on his cheeks—enough to make him look suitably dashing, but not enough to completely cover his scar. Richie wants to wrap himself around Eddie like an octopus and cling on forever. “That’s what I’ve been told.”

Richie grins at him helplessly. Smug bastard. As if this wasn’t all his idea in the first place. 

“So are the rumors true?” the reporter asks. “You’re Richie’s boyfriend?”

“Luckily for me, yes,” Eddie answers swiftly, and squeezes Richie’s forearm gently. Richie’s heart thrums, fast as a drumroll. “Any other questions?”

The woman laughs a little, seemingly delighted by the way her eyebrows arch as she looks from Eddie to Richie and back again. “That clears things up for me,” she says. “Thanks, gentlemen.”

“Have a good night!” Richie tells her. He waves over his shoulder as Eddie moves him away. 

They pause for the next photographer, and Richie tries not to look like he’s about to lose it when Eddie lets go of his hand to wind his arm around Richie’s waist instead, tugging him in close. They’re fitted snugly against each other, shoulder and him and thigh. 

“I’m so delighted by you,” Richie says. A camera clicks before his eyes, momentarily blinding him with a hot-white flash, and he blinks quickly. Eddie is guiding him along to the next spot, and Richie follows. “You’re a man with a  _ mission,  _ Spaghetti! Mission: Impossible! Fucking—Eddie Spaghetti Cruise!” 

“Sometimes the words you say make me want to break my bones,” Eddie says flatly, and sends the camera a dazzling smile. 

“Oh you lovely, feral little man,” Richie says, delighted, and feels brave enough to kiss Eddie’s hair. 

Eddie turns his face right as Richie is pulling away, planting a grazing kiss on the upturn of Richie’s jaw. It’s warm and feather-light, and Richie has to close his eyes for a moment. “Rich,” Eddie says, “you’re gonna get hair gel in your mouth.”

“Worth it,” Richie says. He feels unsteady, feels like the earth is tipping beneath his feet and Eddie’s what’s holding him up. He hopes nobody comes and talks to him right now. He doesn’t know what he might say. 

Eddie slips a hand between Richie’s jacket and shirt, and his palm presses warm over the layer right above Richie’s skin. They’re standing right at the entrance of the theater, so there isn’t anybody behind them: somebody takes a couple more pictures of them, and Richie keeps his heart in with the brittle gate of his teeth, and then they go inside. 

*

In the darkness of the theater Richie watches his words spoken aloud on screen, and Eddie kisses the ball of his shoulder when he goes tight with the strange, exhilarated shame of being known. 

It’s the first time Richie’s seen the whole thing. He’s watched bits, of course, behind the scenes footage and half of the odd scene here and there. But never the whole thing in its entirety. 

He almost can’t look. Like a car crash, like the sun. 

It’s not a stunning film, and it’s definitely not going to win any awards. It’s funny, but not in the way Richie’s old fans will be used to—not full of jokes at other people’s expense, and lies, and… straight stuff. It’s not straight. It’s very, very gay. 

It’s a quiet sort of movie that nobody will remember very long after leaving the theater, but will hopefully give people a smile and a few good laughs while they’re viewing it. It’s something about an easy kind of love. Something that Richie wrote in his bedroom when their apartment was still just Eddie’s apartment, and Richie thrilled down to his bones each time he got to see Eddie in his pajamas in the mornings. 

So Eddie kisses his shoulder in the dark where no one can see, and Richie, chest swollen like it’s filled with a slow-expanding balloon, leans against Eddie like his strings have been cut. 

“You alright, Rich?” Eddie asks him, mouth against Richie’s ear so he won’t be heard by anyone else. He stirs the hair at Richie’s temple. He has a hand on Richie’s thigh, resting respectably above his knee, and Richie can feel the shape of each of Eddie’s fingers perfectly through the fabric of his suit. 

Richie can’t say anything so he just nods, sure that Eddie feels it. On screen the two protagonists are sitting in a cafe somewhere, and one of them is using coffee creamer and sugar packets to tell the story he’s wrapped up in. The other smiles at him, slow and careful, like giving in.  _ He loves him,  _ the audience should think. And then the creamer spills, and they laugh.  _ He loves him,  _ they should think again. 

People are laughing, and it’s genuine enough that not even Richie can twist this around into something pitying or dismissive or untrue.  _ Eddie  _ is laughing. That’s the best of all. 

“Eddie,” Richie murmurs. 

Eddie looks at him. The light of the screen reflects in his pupils, little moving images that Richie can’t make out. The shape of Eddie’s mouth is still soft on a laugh. 

Richie kisses him. Tips his head down and finds Eddie’s mouth with his own, that warm curving shape, and kisses him while a theater full of people laugh at a luckier set of men on screen. 

Eddie’s hand moves a little on Richie’s thigh, up and down, barely enough to even notice—but Richie feels it like a fire in his belly. A hungry, hungry emptiness.

He must make a sound, a sigh or a murmur or a wanting kind of hum. Eddie pulls away. 

Richie can’t breathe. Every cell of him is starving, and he doesn’t know what to do. 

“Hey,” Eddie whispers. It’s just a breath, passed between them, wafted concern. There’s a line between his eyebrows. 

Richie shakes his head and smooths Eddie’s frown with the pad of his thumb, turning back to the screen. His heart is swollen in his throat. He couldn’t answer Eddie’s unspoken question if he wanted to. 

It’s enough that Eddie lets him off the hook, tipping his shoulder into Richie’s and keeping his hand where it is, but focusing his attention back toward the film. And thank god. If he had looked at Richie for one more moment with those big, imploring eyes, Richie would have coughed up all this truth inside of him with nowhere else to hide. 

The audience laughs again around Richie, even louder this time. Eddie squeezes his thigh, and Richie holds on. 

*

The night air is starry and clean and clear, and Richie takes in lungfuls of it like he’ll die if he doesn’t. 

The audience applauded when the movie was done. The cast and crew went up onstage and did a Q and A, and Richie answered questions about his creative process, about the inspiration behind the film, about casting decisions which he had very little to do with and about what he’ll work on next. The house lights came up at the end, and Eddie was watching him from the audience, steady and proud. 

They’re home now, and Richie’s dressed down in sweats and socked feet, leaning against the balcony and closing his eyes against the sounds of the city at four am. 

The balcony door slides open behind Richie. He listens to Eddie pad out quietly; keeps his eyes closed even as Eddie comes to stand next to him, a slender line of heat in the November chill. 

The traffic lights push bright at Richie’s eyelids. 

“Here,” says Eddie, and then there’s a mug between Richie’s palms, and he takes a sip without looking. 

His eyes fly open immediately. “You just put champagne in a fucking mug,” he says. 

“I know I did,” Eddie snaps. He’s close enough that all Richie would have to do is sway a little to the side and then they’d be touching. Easy as pie. “We don’t own any champagne glasses.”

Richie laughs. God, Eddie’s so weird. “We own  _ wine glasses,  _ Eds, my darling.”

Eddie’s cheeks are pink. He tries to frown but it ends up as a smile, something exasperated and fond and tired and excited all at once. “Just drink it, asshole,” he says, and then he makes the move: shuffles in closer until they’re entirely in each other’s space, pressed together on their little balcony in the cold. “We’re celebrating.”

“Celebrating,” Richie echoes. He smiles down into his mug. Wonders if he’s going to cry. 

“Celebrating you,” Eddie amends, and clinks his mug against Richie’s, daring him to argue with a half-hearted glare. 

Richie concedes with a quiet laugh, face tilted down toward Eddie. Their living room light is on, shining out through the door and lighting Eddie up all soft and gold. He’s lovely. Richie loves him. 

“I love you,” Richie says. “Eddie. I do.”

Immediately he wants to throw himself off of the balcony. His legs turn weak and he grips the railing with one hand, heart gnawing so sharply on his ribcage that his vision goes dark and spotted in the corners. Eddie is saying something, but Richie doesn’t know what. His heart bleeds out onto his tongue and he swallows it down, and somewhere down in the city, a siren wails.

Richie’s mug isn’t in his hands anymore. Eddie is there, and then Richie blinks and he’s gone and the contents of Richie’s stomach shift over themselves, and then he blinks again and Eddie is right back in front of him, his palms on Richie’s cheeks, his face filling Richie’s vision. 

“Richie,” Eddie is saying. Soft and low. A pulse. “Rich. Breathe, you’ve gotta breathe.”

There’s a monster in Richie Tozier, and its breath is his breath. 

He does it anyway, ragged. Breaks that thin layer of ice that has spread itself over his lungs like a shell. 

“Good,” Eddie murmurs, and Richie thinks of Eddie saying that to him backstage, of Eddie saying that to him in the living room, in the kitchen, when they were kids and when they first moved in with each other and a thousand other times in between. Eddie tells Richie that he’s good. That he’s not something inherently shameful, bad just for existing. Eddie touches the tender skin beneath Richie’s eyes, puffy and wet now, and that thing inside Richie is fed. 

“Eddie,” Richie whispers. He can’t catch a full inhale, and the word hitches in the middle, mauled by all this too-big-too-much  _ want.  _ He is crying, which isn’t a surprise but is still mortifying. “I’m sorry.”

“ _ No, _ ” Eddie says. 

It’s fierce enough to startle whatever else Richie was going to say right out of his throat. He gazes down at Eddie through blurry eyes. 

“God, please don’t apologize,” Eddie says, and Richie takes a moment to really  _ look  _ at him: his eyes are the size of his fists, cheeks red. He looks… he looks desperate for something. And his hands are still on Richie’s face, catching his tears as they fall. “Please don’t… Rich.” He takes a deep breath. “I fucking love you, too. I’m _ in _ love with you.”

Richie stares at him. 

“Oh my god,” Eddie says, voice soft and nervous, “please say something—”

Richie pulls him in by the waist, diving down to nestle his face in the worn-soft collar of Eddie’s shirt. He should be kissing him, probably, and he wants to be—he  _ wants  _ to be—but he has to breathe him in first. Has to hold onto Eddie, and convince himself that all this is real. 

Eddie holds him back. A hand between Richie’s scapula, one cupped around the base of his skull: he hooks Richie in and holds him tight, mouth pressed closed above Richie’s ear. 

“Hey,” Eddie says, and it’s quiet and somehow just as shattered as Richie, which didn’t even seem possible a minute ago.  _ None  _ of this seemed possible a minute ago. Eddie sweeps his hand soothingly up and down the knobs of Richie’s spine. “It’s ok.”

Richie inhales, and it shudders in his lungs. 

“I didn’t know,” he says, soft against Eddie’s skin. “I had no idea, I—I feel like an idiot, Eds.”

Eddie laughs wetly. “Me too,” he murmurs. “I thought you might, but I… you’re you, you know? You’re  _ Richie.  _ You love everybody.”

Richie is quiet. “Not as much as I love you.”

“Jesus,” Eddie says. He is holding onto Richie tight, so tight, like he used to when they were kids and Richie would climb in through his bedroom window on nights Sonia said Eddie was too sick to leave. Like Richie’s given him a gift. Like the gift is Richie himself. “Jesus, Rich.”

Richie kisses him soft on the tail-end of that word, taking the plosive of it back into his mouth. 

It’s different now, different from the hundreds of other times they’ve kissed each other these past few weeks—hesitant, like it’ll mean too much if they don’t hold back, or desperate, like they might not get another chance if they do. Eddie kisses him back and Richie shivers on a sigh, hands wound up in the fabric of the sweatshirt he’s wearing. Eddie kisses him back and for the first time there isn’t any of that sick shivery fear, that shameful guilt of taking and taking and knowing that in the end, everything will be taken back. 

“Mm…” Eddie pulls back so there’s nothing but a breath between them—Richie catches a glimpse of glimmer-dark eyes, Eddie smiling a kind of smile that cleaves Richie in two like a hatchet through the trunk of a tree—and then Eddie’s mouthing at the hinge of his jaw, the heartbeat in his neck. Richie’s eyes slam closed on their own. “I wanted to do this all night,” Eddie tells him. He runs both palms up Richie’s chest, hooks his hands behind Richie’s neck and pulls him down and breathes his last words into the warmth of Richie’s mouth. “So fucking proud of you, Richie. Love you so much.”

“Oh my god,” Richie murmurs unsteadily. 

He still can’t wrap his head around the fact that this is real, that this is happening. Happening to  _ him  _ of all people. He told Eddie he loved him and Eddie said it  _ back.  _

Richie doesn’t realize that Eddie isn’t kissing him any longer until he feels Eddie’s fingers unwinding Richie’s own from their death grip on his sweatshirt; until Eddie asks, soft and concerned, “Rich? You alright?”

It’s the second time he’s asked that tonight. Richie opens his eyes and looks down at Eddie, breath coming fast, and he loves him  _ so much,  _ and he says, “I think I’m about to have a panic attack.”

Richie even loves the goddamn Grand Canyon of a valley that digs itself between Eddie’s eyebrows when he frowns like that. The creases at the corners of his mouth, the way his eyes go arched and round. Richie is—Richie is like a scrambled egg. Soft and runny and slipping around the non-stick pan of existence. 

Eddie curls a palm over the place where Richie’s breath feels like it’s tied up into a bunch of stupid-tight knots in his chest. “Do you wanna go inside and sit down?”

Richie nods. 

Eddie makes to let go of Richie but that’s much, much worse, so Richie flails inelegantly and grabs at Eddie’s hand. He doesn’t want to let go of him, doesn’t want to stop touching. Just needs to sit down for a moment, Eddie in his space. Just needs to breathe. 

Eddie kisses the sensitive skin at the inside of Richie’s wrist. Richie’s heart flips over behind his ribs, a fish out of water.

They sit down on the couch once they’re inside, a little bit of space between their thighs, their linked hands resting on the cushion. 

Richie looks to his right and Eddie is already watching him. Even and warm and so fucking fond that Richie could start crying again. 

“I might start crying again,” Richie says weakly. 

“That’s ok,” says Eddie. He shifts closer, and something like relief frees up some space in Richie’s lungs. Eddie holds the nape of Richie’s neck in a gentle-warm palm, tipping Richie a little closer so he can kiss his cheek, lips lingering. 

Richie loves him, loves him, loves him. 

“I’m an ugly crier,” Richie warns, half a joke, half some fucked-up bizarre urge to self-sabotage that climbs up his throat with claws. He swallows tight, and keeps his eyes on the place where his left hand grapples his knobby knee. “So you might wanna look away for this one, Spagheds.”

“You idiot,” Eddie says softly. He takes Richie’s chin in his hand. Tips it toward him gently, ‘til he has to look him in the eyes. “I always wanna look at you.”

“Eddie I am going to go berserk,” Richie says. Unravelling. “I am going to bury my head in the sand, ostrich style—”

Eddie is such a good kisser. 

He takes his time, which is not something Richie thought Eddie Kaspbrak would ever do, moving his mouth so slowly over Richie’s that Richie is about to drift up to the stratosphere in a thousand little particles until finally, finally, Eddie’s tongue slides in alongside Richie’s. Eddie’s hand flexes slightly on the back of Richie’s neck—unconscious, maybe, an instinct. Richie’s stomach goes tight and hot. 

“Are you still,” Eddie murmurs, breathing a little harder, and nips at Richie’s lower lip because he’s a fucking  _ monster,  _ “having a panic attack?”

“The good kind,” Richie gasps. “I guess? Or, no, or, fuck, Eddie, don’t stop…”

“Ok,” Eddie says, and slings a leg over Richie’s thighs, settling himself down right in his lap. Richie’s done for. Gonzo. One-hit KOd by Eddie Fucking Kaspbrak. “I won’t.”

Richie loses himself, a little, in Eddie’s hands and the strength of his slender-muscled thighs clamped around Richie’s thicker ones and the mouth on his, velvety and hot and absolutely sure.  _ I love him,  _ Richie thinks, and his heart still races, but it  _ isn’t  _ panic. It’s a promise. It’s a thrill.  _ He loves me.  _

Richie presses his palms into the pointed shapes of Eddie’s scapula, holding him steady with that touch alone. 

“Shit,” says Eddie raggedly, voice a little high, “God, you’re just so fucking—you’re so fucking  _ big. _ ”

Eddie’s mouth is on Richie’s jaw, his neck. His hands squeeze the softness of Richie’s waist over and over again, like a cat kneading blankets. Richie feels a twinge in his chest. “Geez, thanks, Eds,” he says. He wants Eddie to shut up. He wants Eddie to go back to the kissing part and shut  _ Richie  _ up. “You really know how to woo a guy.”

Eddie pulls back. The opposite of what Richie was going for. “Fucking,” says Eddie, brow furrowed, “Richie, what?”

Richie blinks at him. His mouth smarts with the force with which Eddie's been kissing him. He wants to go back to that. “I’m not, like.” He shrugs. “Fit.”

Eddie is staring at him like he’s grown three heads, lips parted and wet from where Richie was kissing him, hair messed up from Richie’s hands. It’s an alluring combination of ravished and judgemental that Richie is extremely into. Eddie says, “I am fucking speechless right now, you are—you are the hottest person I’ve ever seen, you make me  _ insane.” _

Richie feels himself flush slowly, a wash of heat from the tips of his ears down to his belly. He doesn’t want to be looked at. He doesn’t want Eddie to ever look away. 

“Oh my god, you don’t believe me,” says Eddie faintly, like it’s unbelievable, like it’s absolutely unfathomable that Richie can’t understand this. Richie is going to melt into the couch. “I’m fucking in love with you,” Eddie says, “and if I wasn’t, guess what? I’d still be wildly, inappropriately,  _ unbearably  _ attracted to you. So. There.  _ Jesus,  _ Rich—” and he dives down toward the crook of Richie’s neck, his breath hot and soft there, his hands like claws. 

“Oh,” says Richie, struck dumb. It’s… a lot of information to process. He’s blushing so red that his first layer of skin is probably going to drip right off his bones. 

“Yeah, oh,” Eddie mumbles into the skin of Richie’s neck. He shifts back on Richie’s lap so he can get his face in Richie’s chest and kisses the dip between Richie’s pecs, eyelashes fanned down over his cheeks. “I want you to crush me.”

God, he’s such a weird little gremlin man. Richie loves him desperately. 

“Ok, Eds,” Richie says softly. “Lay down then, Eddie my love.”

Eddie goes a dusky, alarm-bell sort of pink at that. Brilliant and charming. He squeezes Richie’s chest again and a lazy curl of heat licks through Richie’s stomach, sleepy and not quite sated, but willing to wait. 

Eddie scrambles off Richie’s lap and leans back against the arm of the couch, patting his thighs invitingly. 

Richie can’t help but laugh a little. Unspooled and fluttering. He turns and props himself over Eddie with both arms, hesitating for just a moment. “Are you sure?” he asks. Eddie’s a strong guy, but he’s right: Richie  _ is  _ big. “I don’t wanna hurt you.”

“You won’t, baby,” Eddie says, touching the curls at Richie’s temple, the wary smile at the corner of his lips, and then in the same insane little breath, “Fucking smash me, bro.”

“Eddie I love you,” Richie says. He lowers himself down and noses at the hollow of Eddie’s throat, smells at his skin. “Every time I see you touching anybody else I think ‘holy shit I wish I was anybody else.’ It’s literally so fucked up of me. I need you to—I think you need to know that I’m not going to be calm or chill about this at all, ever.”

Richie can feel Eddie’s lips in his hair. His chin jabs into the crown of Richie’s head, and Richie thinks, fiercely, that it’s the best thing he’s ever felt. 

“Richie,” Eddie says seriously. “I just asked you to climb on top of me, full-body, and use your big fucking shoulders to crush me. If you pressed me down into the core of the earth right now and buried me in the dirt I wouldn’t complain as long as you were still touching me. I think that, between the two of us, you’re not the one who has to worry about being chill.”

Richie smiles to himself, feeling the way Eddie’s chest rises and falls with his breath beneath him. “That’s true,” he says. “Plus you wanted me so bad you kissed me in front of a bunch of cameras  _ several  _ times. Damn, Eds, you really  _ don’t  _ have any chill.”

He expects Eddie to argue, maybe, to dig his fingers into that sensitive place between Richie’s ribs that always makes him shriek with laughter, makes tears spring to his eyes. Expects Eddie to put on a bit of a show. 

Eddie doesn’t. “Yeah,” he says, and cards his fingers through Richie’s curls.

They go quiet for a little while, just breathing each other in. Richie’s hip aches in this position and Eddie, though deceptively ripped beneath this stuffy little shirts and khakis he’s always wearing, is fucking boney. But Eddie is also… but Eddie doesn’t stop touching Richie, not once: hands in his hair, the flushed back of his neck, running down his sides and up the line of his spine, ridged like a string of pearls. Richie wouldn’t move for the world. 

*

The room is lit up peach with a sunrise when Eddie shakes him gently awake.

“Gotta get up, sweetheart,” he says quietly. Richie’s glasses are knocked askew, his spine screams at him. He’s got a mouthful of Eddie’s sweatshirt. He kisses Eddie’s chest. “We’re not gonna be able to walk tomorrow.”

Richie groans deeply—his body hurts, sure, but the idea of moving is somehow worse—but manages to get to his feet with his eyes squinched mostly closed, head foggy with a cramped kind of sleepiness. 

He isn’t touching Eddie for a moment, which, ew. He reaches out blindly. 

Eddie takes Richie’s hands in his own. “Do you wanna… uh, come to my room?”

There’s a little bit of nervousness in his voice, a little bit of a quaver. Richie forces his eyes open. Smiles at Eddie, and bends down at the waist to press a clumsy kiss over the corner of his mouth. 

“Lead the way, Eddie Spaghetti,” he murmurs. 

Grinning, Eddie does. 

*

**Screenwriter Richie Tozier and Boyfriend Eddie Kaspbrak Seen at Brooklyn Farmer’s Market**

Tozier, who made headlines last year after his unconventional coming out tweet and his first subsequent—and surprisingly moving—film, was spotted at a farmer’s market in Park Slope on Wednesday with his live-in boyfriend. Both Tozier and Kaspbrak were wearing rings: are there wedding bells in the future, or is this simply a publicity stunt? Watch this space to find out. 

*

This is how you end a joke: 

So he kisses you now, in the morning’s when he’s grumpy and in the evening’s when he gets home from work and when you go shopping and when you go to the park and in the coffee shop on the corner of your block when the line is going too slowly and you’re in the middle of a story about your neighbors, a long, rambling thing that you keep interrupting to laugh at before you can get to the punchline, he kisses you, like he couldn’t have possibly done anything else. And maybe that’s the funny part. Maybe that’s the part that makes you laugh, standing there in the middle of a coffee shop that you still don’t know the name of even though you’ve lived beside it for two years, standing there with the rain from outside still damp and cold on your shoulders, in a line in a coffee shop, a story in your mouth: he kisses you, he kisses you, and he loves you while he does it. 

Sometimes you will be hungry still. But he takes your hand in his and you remember that it’s ok to want things who want you back.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! comments/kudos are treasured like they're my own children. 
> 
> come scream with me on twitter @unicornpoe if you want to meet someone more unhinged than you (me, it's me)


End file.
